Love and other Drugs
by The Lady Frost
Summary: Chance encounters, a war without end, a handful of soldiers on the front lines - and the greatest fight they'll face will be how to avoid becoming addicted...to each other. Sometimes the worst thing you can do...is say yes. Definitely a smut filled trip down the canon (with a little AU love in between). Art is Demonleon3D
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: i don't own Resident Evil. Sadly. This is a love story - it's fairly smutty. I just want to prepare the reader. Lemon ahead. I tend to enjoy Jill and Leon as a highly sexual pairing. Thank you for reading!**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part One:**

**Addiction**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

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**Raccoon City - 1998**

* * *

She was running late that morning. She dropped her keys in the toilet while brushing her teeth and had to fish them out. She burned her neck curling her hair. She poked herself in the eye with her mascara. She didn't move out of the way of the slamming fridge door while making something to eat and almost became a Jill sandwich while making a sandwich. The irony of that would not have been lost on her.

She got caught up watching the early morning news and forgot to get in the shower on time. Her alarm clock lost power overnight in the rainstorm. Her little motorbike kept being a pain in the ass about firing up. And traffic was backed up because of the 100 Days of Umbrella festival rejoicing in the influx of business brought about by Umbrella Pharmaceuticals building the production plant at the edge of town.

She raced up the stairs of the RPD station almost late for work. Captain Wesker, damn his eyes, didn't miss a trick. She'd been late on her first day. He'd made her very aware of the fact that it would not be tolerated. He was snooty, yes, and very strict. But he had a way of making you feel about three inches tall as well.

She raced through the lobby of the RPD, holding her helmet under her arm. She pocketed her keys as she ran and missed. They tumbled out of her hand, hit the floor, spun in a circle and were kicked by a walking man into the far corner.

He kept on walking.

"Thanks a lot dude!" She shouted snidely at the guys fat ass as she raced over to get them. She muttered under her breath, "Asshat."

Jill Valentine was notoriously late for everything. She had been most of her life. It was perpetrated by a father that didn't know how to even be remotely on time. If he showed up at all of course. Henri-Louis Valentin was seldom, if ever, around when you needed him. She hadn't heard from him in years. Being in lock up all the time tended to impact your relationships and making it home for Christmas. Landing stateside a French immigrant, Henri tried to Americanize his name and added the E to the end. And so, a brief fling later with her mother Noriko – a Japanese dancer in New York long enough to birth a baby and run away, Jillian-Aime Valentine was born.

Henri was a terrible father. He did the best he could, in some ways. He was lazy and self-centered and above the law. So he often times stole or lied or cheated those around him. More than once, she woke up to find him having gotten his ass kicked by someone he'd grifted and gotten caught while doing it. He did seem to love her. He spoiled her with love when he could and educated her with books and bedside speeches. He was smart and stupid and flawed. He was in and out of jail and Jill ended up in foster homes most of her youth. He'd get her out and run her around and they'd sleep in trucks and trailers and have great adventures. He'd go back in lock up and she'd go back to group living and school.

She was smart as a whip and quick on her feet. He taught her how to bleed a bastard with her little knife and crack open safes like a professional. She loved him. And it was real and painful love. Because he was a terrible, awful, failure of a father. She'd have loved, just once, to wake up in a suburban bedroom and been normal.

Her keys were picked up by a person sitting in "chairs." Chairs were where they kept prisoners waiting to be processed and where new recruits waited for an interview. She'd spent two torturous hours in chairs her first day here bored off her ass until Chris Redfield had shown up. She'd spent the next two laughing.

The person in chairs was young and handsome. He offered her keys to her with a charming, disarming, and slightly dorky smile. He was thin, tall, and had a long ponytail tied back from a cute face that was all sharp angles and high cheekbones. The eyes were husky blue and rather haunting.

She grabbed her keys from his hand. "Thanks, dude. Good luck on your interview, yeah? Just remember, don't panic. Chief Irons likes confidence. Pretend you're James Bond and you'll be golden like a shower."

"Awesome. Thanks."

God, he was young. She was barely in her twenties, this was true. But this kid was fresh out of high school young. He still had baby written all over him. He reminded her of Rebecca Chambers on Bravo Team. She offered him another little something for his chivalry: she tossed him her S.T.A.R.S. zippo lighter.

He caught it, lifting a brow.

"For when all the other lights go out my friend. Trust me…it'll happen. You can never have too much light dude. True story." And she hurried up the stairs to the S.T.A.R.S. office.

A few weeks later would find her trapped in the first real fight of her life. The Spencer Estate was waiting for them to walk in, run, hide and almost die fighting to get out. In the lobby of the RPD that day, she'd met the other side of that long night. Leon S. Kennedy interviewing for the only night he'd ever serve on the RPD police force. A baby maybe but a hero not long after.

And the light she'd given him saved his life more than once over that long night.

* * *

**Outside the Clock Tower - July 1998**

* * *

Her bike wouldn't start. She'd kick-started it, kicked it, and done her best to attempt to coo at it so it would get moving. However, the damn thing was convinced it had reached the end of its life.

Annoyed, Jill suffered the outrageous heat for another handful of minutes while she decided what to do. She could hoof it back to the station and get Redfield to loan her his truck. She could walk home - in one hundred degrees heat at high noon. She could walk to the local pool and hang out in the water with the rest of the city.

She watched kids run and play in the heat by the tower, jumping through the water spouts provided by Raccoon for the locals to enjoy the park in the boiling heat.

While she was trying to pick her poison, there was a rustle behind her. She turned, on edge, and paused with her hand halfway to her shoulder holster. Hands raised, he stepped into the flicker of sunlight that dappled from the tree cover above her.

White t-shirt, jeans, snappy little leather brown leather sandals. He looked charming and harmless. "Gonna shoot me?"

In her blue tube top and skirt paired with knee-high black leather boots, Jill was still boiling in the heat. Sweat slid down her throat as she mused, "Maybe. Aren't you boiling in those jeans?"

He shrugged and shifted toward her. "Not really. I grew up spending tons of time in Florida with my grandparents. I have a house in Arizona. The heat doesn't bother me."

Jill tilted her head, observing him as he came toward her. His hair was tied back in a stubby little ponytail at the base of his skull. It was some shade of blonde. What did they call that? Dirty dishwater?

Aloud, Jill asked, "Do you often accost girls in the park on summer days?"

His brows arched and she paused with the toothpick between her lips that she was rolling around while she attempted, for the eighth time, to quit smoking. Nice brows. Thick. Charming. Dark. Over eyes the same shade of the water she'd seen once on a whale watching trip in Alaska. Pale. Pretty. Almost sky blue

He returned, "Only cute ones."

Oh. Her mouth winged up into a smile. "...really? You're gonna flirt with me while I stand here melting?"

He shrugged and answered, "It lets me watch that sweat run down into your cleavage while you laugh at me, so I'm ok with it."

Jill's teeth flashed in a grin. "Ok, handsome. You win the jackpot. Cocky kids in white t-shirts get to help me fix this piece of shit. You game?"

"Oh, I'm game." The guy moved closer to her, paused, and mused, "You gonna taser me if I get too close?"

"I seem like that type?"

"Actually, no. You seem like the type to knee me in the balls instead."

Jill laughed, audibly, loudly, and with a good amount of good humor. "Oh, we must have met before."

He was poking around on her bike with clinks of metal as he responded, "We have actually." She watched his arms bunch in his t-shirt and stared at his ass as he bent over to tug on other parts of her bike, "You gave me a lighter and some pretty solid advice once."

Oh. _Ohhhhhh._

Jill snapped her fingers in memory, "Right. Right. Right. Rookie?"

"Coming this fall, yeah." He ducked down further to look under the bike. She bobbed her brows in appreciation at his cute little butt in those faded old jeans he was wearing, "S.T.A.R.S. right? Valentine?"

Impressed, Jill nodded as he rolled to his back and she got to see a glimpse of his belly when his shirt hiked up. Nice. Flat. Toned. He was thin, sure, but he was sleek. Like a runner. Or a swimmer. "That's right. Jill Valentine. You?"

Her eyes slid down to his crotch and studied the bulge there without any shame at all as he answered from beneath her bike, "Kennedy. I'm hoping to get to S.T.A.R.S. eventually, actually. Any more helpful tips?"

Jill thought: _You might want to sleep your way to the top._

Amused at her sheer feminine interest, she returned, "Pick your battles. Being a rookie is hard enough. Stand out enough to get good attention, but don't become an ass kisser. The other rookies will not play nice if you try to steal their thunder."

Kennedy leaned out from under the bike. "Yeah?"

"Absolutely."

"Thanks." He sounded genuinely grateful for the advice, "You've got a dirty carburetor. Any chance you have a phillips head screwdriver on ya?"

She laughed, "Sure. It's tucked into my top."

Kennedy stuck his head back out from under the bike. He considered her and finally replied, "...you want me to get it?"

Jill laughed and kicked his flank gently. "Perv. Any chance of getting it to run?"

"Nope." Kennedy slid out from under the bike and Jill offered him a hand up. He took it and wiped the grease on his hands on his jeans. "Sorry. This baby is parked here until further notice. But I can give you a lift to the hardware store to get what we need to fix her. If you're game."

Jill rolled her tooth pick in her teeth. Kennedy. Why was that familiar? "Sure. You promise not to rape me?"

He chuckled, eyes twinkling, "...absolutely. However, I don't promise not to oogle you."

He was kinda adorable. Why was his damn name ringing bells?

With a snap of her fingers, she pointed at him and laughed, "Kennedy! Riiiight. The wiz kid! The boy wonder! The kid who never misses."

He rolled his eyes as he tugged his keys out of his pocket, "I prefer to answer to Leon."

She fell into step beside him as they moved toward the street. He chirped the release on his keys and a black Jeep flashed to signal it was open. The sides were missing in typical summer fashion. Jill gripped the top and swung into the passenger seat.

Simple. Not a flashy Jeep at all. Big tires. Stick shift. Classic steering column. Nothing over the top for the wiz kid, apparently.

He swung up beside her and gunned the engine. They moved swiftly into traffic and he shifted gears without thinking about it. Effortless, muscle memory, she liked a guy who knew his way around a manual transmission.

As the wind whipped their hair and tugged pieces loose of his in a charming way, Jill called above the engine and the breeze, "With scores like I saw, you could have your pick of precincts."

He shrugged a shoulder. Jill asked, "Why Raccoon?"

Kennedy glanced at her and back at the road. He smirked and finally laughed, "I like the scenery."

Jill's teeth flashed in another grin, "You are just all kinds of fucking charming, aren't you?"

"You tell me." He winked at her and had her reaching over to rub his arm.

"It ever work?"

Leon shrugged again, "First time for everything, right?"

Jill studied his profile as he drove. He was so handsome. Thinner than she usually liked, but that was just his build. He was tall, young, and had enough common sense to take the sides of his Jeep in summer. He was charming and perfect white teeth.

So, she answered, "Yep. You wanna go back to my apartment and rape me?"

He nearly swerved off the road as he whipped his head to look at her and forgot to keep driving. She grabbed the wheel to keep them from flipping over and straightened them out, her eyes twinkling madly with amusement, "Easy, handsome. Need some help driving?"

He gripped the wheel and rolled the Jeep over to the curb by J's Bar. She glanced at it, back at him, and pursed her lips. "You wanna get drunk first?"

And he said, "Nope. I live above the bar."

Jill leaped from the Jeep as he did. They moved around the side of the bar and took a set of rusty steps up to a metal door above the bar. As he reached to unlock it, he told her, "I'm half convinced I'm gonna get you in here and you'll knee me in the balls."

He slid the key in the lock, she moved against his back and slid her hand down his belly into his pants, and the door pushed inward with a groan of metal hinges. Jill's fingers closed around his dick and she cooed, breathlessly, "...I love a man who's ready to go."

He was rock hard in her fist.

Leon's hands shot out to grip the railing as she pumped him inside his jeans. His zipper got Jill's other hand as it hissed and released, giving her more room to roll his erection in her palm. As an afterthought, she noticed his boxers were a nice shade of blue.

Pushing against his back, she guided them into the apartment. The door stayed wide open as he staggered, put his hands on the wall beside the door and she stuck to him like a parasite, pumping her fist until he was weeping all over her fingers.

With a grunt, he finally pulled her hand off him and turned. She laughed, he gruffed, "You want me to go before you?"

And she was still laughing as he picked her up under her armpits, kicked the door shut, and carried her down the hallway. Their mouths crushed together, tongue and sucking. He shoved her against the wall and reached up under her skirt to rub at her over her panties.

Jill moaned as he smeared the wet fabric against her engorged lips beneath it, finding her clit and forcing the silk to roll against it until her thighs trembled. Aloud, Jill gasped, "..._oh, fuck__._"

And Leon grunted, "Yeah?"

Her high pitched whine was her answer. He shoved her panties to the side to put two fingers in her. She gasped, he fingered her crudely and roughly, and she rocked against his invading digits. When she was close, thighs quaking and soaking his thrusting hand, he jerked her away from the wall and half carried her under his arm into the bedroom.

Wide open, all windows and sunlight, the room was inviting. She didn't see any of it. She clicked off her holster to toss it on the floor as he carried her. Her gun made a heavy clunk sound as it hit the concrete.

He threw her toward the bed. Jill laughed, landing on her face, and Leon jerked her hips up toward him. Her skirt made a sound of ripping seams as he yanked it up her hips and barred her thong to the sunlight.

Gasping, half laughing, nearly face down on the mattress, Jill asked, "You think we should stop?"

And his teeth sank into her left ass cheek.

He might as well have stuck a shock rod into her ribs. Jill keened, his hand grabbed her thong and jerked, and the ripping fabric sounded so loud against their panting. His fingers thrust sharply into her again, one, two, three while he worked her body open. She could barely breathe with each gasping cry.

Leon slid against her back and over it, he grabbed her hair to turn her head to the side and kissed her so wetly that she couldn't do anything but shake beneath him, and she mewled madly when his hand caught her tube top to tug it down and release her bare breasts to dangle down as he fucked her body with his unrelenting fingers.

Leaning back, Leon shoved her skirt up until it was mostly a belt around her middle. He reached over his head to tug his shirt off and toss it away. His fingers slid out of her and he curled over her back again, slipping his hands down her sweaty torso to palm her breasts. She gasped, shaking with need from the change of pace from desperate and dying, to slow and torture.

His hands gently shaped her tits, rolling the softness until her nipples peaked. His fingers plucked her nipples, his teeth nipped at her back. Jill gasped, high pitched and needy, "Hey...hey...I'm up here."

Leon's hand slid into her hair again to turn her head to him. And she demanded, "Kiss me. Now."

He did, hoarsely chuckling until their mouths sealed. He moaned, softly, and she swallowed that down while she dined on his tongue. When he let go of her mouth to lean back and lick a wet line down her spine, Jill mewed, "Holy hell. You sure you're a rookie?"

Leon laughed and answered, "Told you I should be S.T.A.R.S."

She gasped out a laugh, he shoved into her waiting body so hard her teeth clacked, she screamed so loud it echoed, and his hand came down to slap against her pert ass. It stung. It felt great. It spurred her on like a racehorse.

His hands gripped her hips to guide her into him. He fucked her fast and hard until her body started to make wet slurping sounds as she opened to let him deeper. Tremors sit into her flesh, spilling her upper body down onto the bed with her ass up in the air for him to use. He grunted, he groaned, he growled like some kind of animal and made her whine in answer.

His thumb hooked into her ass and she jerked against it, he shoved into her so hard it made her head spin, and she relented to let him use her as they both wanted. When she was close and her thighs kept trying to snap shut, she pleaded, hoarsely, "...harder. _Harder."_

She was delicious. It was that simple. He wanted to die buried in her up to his balls. They slapped her bubble butt with each cunt claiming thrust of his dick into her. He watched her hand slide up and under her belly. She found her clit with those slender, piano playing fingers and he fucked her harder while she fingered herself as he tried to split her open.

His hands shifted to her skirt. He jerked on the fabric until it ripped down the center to dangle off one thigh with her ruined panties. His fingers closed around the tube top banded around her middle like the bridle of a horse. He had a brief moment of wanting to cum inside of her and she went.

She went around him with a warbling cry of release. Her pussy tightened. Her hand stopped stroking her clit and threw itself to the side of her to grip some blankets and squeeze. Her ass shoved back on him so hard it almost hurt and slapped loudly in the room. He popped his thumb out of her ass as she seized around his cock like a velvet vice.

His balls echoed it, seizing painfully as Leon cursed. He tried to pull out, she slammed back against him in a murderous pace as she came all over him, and he gave up. He rolled her to her back, her legs splayed obscenely in those boots as the heel cut a jagged swath across his bed, and he gripped the back of her neck to pull her up to kiss her. She keened, grabbing the comforter above her head to stop her flailing hands, and he shoved her left leg up as the knee. Her right leg braced on the bed, Jill threw her hands up to grab handfuls of his hair to shove her tongue in his mouth, and Leon jerked at her hip to shove her down on his plunging dick as the back of her thigh hit his chest, his cock hit the spongy edge of her cervix, and he came in her.

Jill seized around him, coming almost simultaneously, her mouth opened and she let out high-pitched, tremulous, shaking sobs of release. She kept gasping, "Oh, _god...ohmigod..."_ Her body spasmed madly beneath him as he collapsed atop her.

Her arms latched around his back. He rolled his hips inside her like he was stirring a cauldron, and she felt the tears slide down her cheeks.

He'd, literally, made her weep with pleasure.

Jill's hands slid over his ass. Her thighs opened and looped her legs over his. He lifted off her so her face wasn't buried in his chest.

It was a nice chest. She'd been right about thinking that. It was smooth with just a touch of hair over the top of his pecs. He was almost painfully lean and her hands roved over his narrow waist to grip the back of his shoulder blades. But it was clear he was in good shape. She thought he'd probably bulk up some as he spent more time on the force.

She got the feeling he was just naturally slim.

He looked down at her as his sweaty hair dangled beside their faces. A bead of salty liquid slid down his nose to drip onto hers. She licked it as it landed on her mouth and he laughed, breathlessly, hoarsely. "I think I might love you, Jill Valentine."

She echoed his laugh as her hands scooped his sweaty hair back. "You sweet talker. You say that to all the girls you cum in?"

Without missing a beat, Leon answered, "You'd be the first on both accounts, sweetheart."

Curious, her brows arched, "Oh? You don't usually dump your load in girls you take home to fuck?"

He tilted his head, eyes twinkling, "Not usually. I'm a gentleman. But you..." He rolled his hips and watched her eyes blur. His voice broke a little, charming her as he finished, "You're not like any girl I've ever met."

"No? That face doesn't get the girls wet and ready?"

He scoffed, grinned, and leaned down to kiss her with his eyes open. She craned her neck toward him and did the same. He said, against her lips, "Not like that. You always stick your hand in guys pants you just met and let them cum in you?"

Adoring him, Jill flashed her teeth, "You'd be the first on both accounts, sweetheart."

He was still laughing as they both leaned in to kiss again.

* * *

Her pager went off about 2 a.m. Curled against his back, she blinked into the moonlight. Rooting around in the semi-darkness, Jill tugged it free of her shoulder holster. The holster was the only thing to survive Hurricane Kennedy.

Naked, she clicked the button to flash the message. It illuminated her face in green as she read it.

Turning, she noticed he was awake on the bed watching her. On his belly, with his arm to the side to dangle toward the floor, and all that hair in his eyes, he was probably the tastiest thing she'd ever seen.

Quietly, she told him, "Sorry to fuck and run, but there was a murder."

Surprised, he sat up in the bed. "Shit. Anybody, you know?"

Jill shook her head, smiling at him, "Some kids near the woods. But I gotta go in..." She hesitated, laughed softly, and asked, "I hate to be a beggar here, but you ripped apart most of my clothes."

Sheepishly, he slid out of the bed, "Right. Sorry." He slipped on his jeans in the dark.

Oh, he was too cute. He was apologizing for fucking her stupid. She'd never met a more adorable kid in her life. Kid? He wasn't much younger than her.

She studied him as he dug in the drawers of his dresser for something she could wear. He rose to bring her a t-shirt that looked like an RPD gray one in the dark. "Any chance you want to wear my underwear home?"

Jill laughed and took the boxers from him too. She slipped on both after tugging up her tube top. "How do I look?"

She looked pretty damn cute in his boxers and his clothes with those evil, soul-stealing boots he adored. Her chestnut brown bob was loose around her face and lovely. Quietly, Leon cupped her face to turn it up to him and avowed, "...beautiful. You look beautiful."

Her chest seized a little as he kissed her. It didn't steal or snap or leave her breathless with lust - this one shimmered with something so much worse. It was tender. Without realizing it, Jill sagged against him to kiss him back.

It went on for a handful of minutes before her pager buzzed again and they drew apart.

She could feel the flush on her face as she murmured, "...right. I should go. Thanks...for the clothes." She paused at the door as he stood watching her in the moonlight. Even his bare feet were cute. Damn him. And she added, "And the sex. Thanks for the clothes and the sex."

Leon chuckled, shaking his head, "You're welcome. Your bikes outside."

Surprised, Jill clutched her holster to her belly and queried, "...how?"

Leon shrugged and shifted toward the nightstand. He struck up a cigarette in the dark with a zippo. He was so bad for her. Between the drinks and the smokes and the fucking, she was kinda afraid he was just sheer addiction.

He replied, "While you were sleeping, I ran over to fix it and brought it back here."

Jill muttered, "You ran five miles to fix my bike?"

Again, he shrugged nonchalantly. "No biggie. I run that every day anyway."

They held gazes in the swirling smoke from his orange tip. Jill cleared her throat, trying not to be mesmerized, "Well, thank you. Seriously. I don't know how to repay you."

"No payment necessary. Just come on over and rape me again sometime, Jill Valentine."

She backed up. She bumped into the hallway. He grinned in the dark and she returned, "...right. Officer Kennedy."

"Jill."

She turned and fled.

He stood in the dark palming the zippo. His eyes turned down to it. S.T.A.R.S. - the lighter never failed him. And now every time he struck it up, he'd picture her face. If he'd ever wondered if he'd picked the right force before, he didn't now. He knew in his guts this was the place he was supposed to be. He was gonna go home and pack up his stuff and he was going to finally move out here.

Pausing, he winced and realized it would probably be best if he broke up with his girlfriend first. In a handful of moments, Jill Valentine had gotten him to cheat on his girlfriend, fuck her bareback, and cum inside her. So much for being a good guy.

He was officially a cad. He lamented, on a laugh, "...women."

He couldn't wait to come back here and see her again.

He absolutely _loved _Raccoon City.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Two:**

**Denial**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**London - 2000**

* * *

The grand summit of international leaders was filled with suits. Suits, suits, suits as far as the eye could see. It was hard to remember that suits had a head when you were staring at gray, navy, and black everywhere you looked.

The final word had come down in favor of the continuation of the Anti-Umbrella Pursuit and Investigation Team. Apparently, different organizations would continue to help fund the anti-terror program, in conjunction with US-STRATCOM, to stop the widening band of bio-terror incidents that were trickling down from the loss of Raccoon City. The need to train and educate to avoid catastrophic losses was tantamount to the success of the entire military.

Jill excused herself to head to the lobby during the heated debated over financing. The last thing she cared about was talking heads debating nickles and dimes. So long as she got to continue knocking Umbrella down and grinding its bones to dust, she didn't care where the funding came from. Before it was done, she was going to make sure the only thing left of that corrupt corporate greed machine was a smoldering pile of ash.

The blue suit she wore was more cobalt than navy. It fit well against the pale rose of her complexion and made the open-necked white blouse beneath it pop prettily. Her hair was secured at the nape of her neck in a sleek ponytail, professional, and elegant. Her toes were poked into serviceable pumps in no-nonsense black. Her hose were basic beige. She was, for all intents and purposes, as much of a corporate vampire as the rest of them.

As she sipped coffee, she studied those coming and going from the enormous conference center. They paused to chat, they took elevators, they laughed by the fountain that trickled prettily in the lobby. The dreary gray light from the misty morning beyond the windows filtered through to cast shadows on serviceable shoes and smiles.

It was a cookie cutter corporate world at its finest.

And then it wasn't.

The expression a diamond in the rough took on new meaning.

She paused with her coffee half way to her mouth.

The vest was royal blue in a shade that stood out like a splash of color in sea of black and white. The blue and silver striped tie he wore paired nicely with the crisp white shirt beneath it. He'd rolled those shirt sleeves up his forearms and high cuffed them at his elbows making a stuffy generic look into something sharp and sexy. Jill sipped her coffee with a little smirk.

The stubby ponytail was still in place and the wild Celtic beauty of the eyes fit the careless strands that had slipped through to frame his jaw. She wanted to stick her thumb in that little cleft in his chin and see if he liked it. He had just enough of a few days growth of beard on his perfect face to look less like the fresh-faced rookie she'd sacrificed her morals on a few years before.

He paused, he spoke to someone beside him and they both laughed. Liking the little jitter in her belly at the sight of him, Jill turned back to the coffee cart to freshen her cup. She was just lifting it, nicely sweet and light with just the right amount of sugar, to her mouth when a voice beside her ear murmured, "Why are you always wearing a skirt when I see you?"

The smile was on her face before she could help it. She felt her lower lip roll under her teeth, amusing herself with the feminine reaction, and drawled, "Why are you always behind me when I'm in one?"

She'd forgotten how much she liked that laugh. Careless, carefree, and so very full - he bubbled with good humor in a way she realized she'd been missing. For all Chris' company, he wasn't much of a joker when they were in public. His seriousness tended to rub off on her until they were both often perceived as being cold. She had a bit of a reputation for it in the right circles. You didn't touch Jill Valentine or you drew back a frozen nub.

She wondered if anyone would believe she knew how to give shit with the best of them.

What was funny about Leon Kennedy? He didn't even care about social graces enough to let it stop him. He just opened his mouth and said whatever he was thinking.

He chuckled, "Put down that coffee and come here."

She did, without thinking, surprising herself.

"You gonna rip my skirt if I don't?"

His amusement curled around them like a warm blanket, "I might rip your skirt if you do. I'm unpredictable like that."

His hand slid to the small of her back and he turned her. Smooth. Thoughtless. She found herself enveloped in a hug in the lobby of the Global Pharmaceutical Consortium and she didn't even care.

She tensed, for just a breath, as she couldn't remember the last time anyone, anywhere had tried to hug her - and then she just...relented.

Her arms slid around him. His encircled in a way that said somebody had hugged him a lot in his life. Envious, Jill leaned her cheek against his for just a moment. With laughter in his tone, he teased, "You grow? You feel taller."

Her voice rich with humor, Jill returned, "I would be since I'm not bent in two with my ass in the air."

Without missing a beat, he put his lips to her ear and tempted, "...you wanna be?"

She didn't even stop the laughter. It spilled out of her on a delighted tinkle of sound. She let go of him and stepped back, shaking her head, "And here I see some things don't change. Still a shameless pervert, Mr. Kennedy."

"Fingers crossed that never changes, right?" He winked at her. They stared at each other with stupid grins until Jill took a gasping breath. She realized, sadly, she'd been holding it.

His eyes flared with amusement as he teased, "Took your breath away, did I?"

She slapped his left biceps with a roll of her eyes, "So does a windy day, handsome, don't flatter yourself."

Amused, he tucked his hands in his back pockets. Why? He wanted to put them on her ass in that prissy little suit she was wearing. He had that reaction around her, sadly. The last time had cost him a relationship, which was fine as his ex-girlfriend in those days was a thunder cunt anyway, and a good slice of his dignity. Part of him had wondered if he'd managed to knock her up that day.

Clearly not as the child support police had never arrived on his doorstep to castrate him and take his hard earned income.

It was a curious thing that there was a little piece of him that was kinda sad about that. Apparently, he liked her enough to wish he'd blown his load in her and laid claim to her womb. It was very feral of him and almost amusing. He usually wasn't that type of guy.

Making polite conversation, he asked, "You done here yet?"

She shrugged a shoulder, "Waiting on Chris and Barry to tie up loose ends with Wil-Pharma I think. You?"

He rolled his eyes, "I'm the poster boy for the US involvement in bioterror related training." He did air quotes and had her grinning, "Basically they plan to parade me around like a puppy and show me off as their perfect soldier."

Jill tilted her head, "Are you?"

"You tell me."

Charmed, she shrugged again, "The flirting could use work, but the face is good."

"Not perfect?"

He was something else. She pursed her lips. "I don't know. I think I'd need to see the whole package."

It was his turn to roll his bottom lip under and laugh. "...shit. Siren. I realllly want to make a package joke right now."

"...I'm kinda glad you didn't. Why say it when you could show me?" She winked at him and picked up her coffee. "You didn't get the memo about the dress code for this boring shindig?"

He shook his head like a dog coming out of water. "What's that? My brain fell out my ass picturing you looking at my package."

Enjoying the banter, Jill tapped a finger on the side of her cup. "...who's the siren?"

He threw his head back while he laughed like an exuberant kid. It was a good one too, damn him. It made him somehow even more adorable. He was just a happy guy. Maybe their lives had turned to shit in one hand, but he'd managed to hang on to his unflappable charm and good humor. She coveted his spirit in some ways.

Jill studied him as he leaned on the coffee bar beside her. He didn't invade her personal space, not exactly, but he was close enough that she knew he was happy to be there. She had the strangest urge to put her hand in his pants like that first time.

She turned her head to put their faces a few inches apart and told him, "I can see your package."

His face flushed across his cheeks in a way that was endearing as he leaned another inch forward. Their noses brushed and he replied, "Yeah? You should put your hand out and open it."

Her hand slapped over his mouth. She couldn't stop the soft giggling that started. She could _not _be this girl who stood in the lobby flirting with pretty faced former rookies. His eyes fairly sparkled above her hand as she informed him, "No more talk like that, good sir. Or I'll punish you."

That was the wrong thing to say entirely. The moment she said it, she winced, and his brows winged up in a grin behind her palm. She pointed at him with her other hand and warned, "Don't you dare say it."

Her hand slid away and he queried, "What? Say what?"

She pointed at him again. "You know what."

"Do I? Are they friends with who where and why?"

"Stop it. Idiot." She turned toward the counter and ordered him a shot of espresso.

"Thanks." He waited a handful of seconds and added, "...I think I'm due for a good spanking, actually. It is my turn after all. Fair is fair. "

Jill closed her eyes, barely held in the laughter, and slapped his ass for good measure, "You had to say it. You couldn't leave it alone."

"I'm a rebel."

Was he?

She looked at him for a moment and considered him. He kinda was. He was the only guy not wearing a stuffy suit. He was the only guy sporting some kind of rocker hair cut tucked into a ponytail. When she glanced down, she realized he had combat boots poking out of his perfectly creased pants.

Rebel.

He really was.

Why in the world did she find that charming?

Because she was such a company man about everything. It was that simple. She followed the rules. Kennedy? He spent most of his time breaking them or ignoring them or rewriting them.

She'd heard he was recruited after Raccoon. The details were sketchy on the why, but the side mouthing said he was making a name for himself as being top of the tier. A natural. Gifted. Someone said he was practically a genius.

It was incredible that he looked like a rock star and not a bad ass.

Jill set down her coffee and shook her head, "Far be it for me to stifle your rebellion then. It was really good to see you, Leon. But I should probably head back in with the talking heads."

Leon arched a brow and lifted his cup at her, "I wish I was seeing more of you sometimes, Jill, but the good news?"

"What's that?"

"I have a photographic memory."

Her eyes twinkled at him, "I heard that somewhere. Pictures are worth a thousand words sometimes."

Leon gave her a half smile, "I could use some new ones."

Enjoying him, Jill shrugged as she walked backward away from him, "I'll just bet there's lots of girls here that would be happy to oblige."

"Yeah? How about you?"

Jill winked at him and answered, "Can't do it. This is business, Mr. Kennedy. And I am a professional."

"Damn the man. Be a rebel with me, Jill. Rebellion feels good. Just sayin."

Jill turned away with a laugh. "And sometimes? All being a rebel gets you is trouble."

Leon leaned on the counter with his elbows behind him at his hips. He tapped the toe of his left boot and rolled his tongue around his teeth. He asked himself what it was about her that lingered in the back of his head the past few years. In one hand - it was the best sex he'd ever had. She'd come at him like a man in a way, all aggressive need and disregard for the rules. She had a reputation for being a straight arrow, but she was a succubus inside a bad suit. She was beautiful, but that wasn't the whole of it because lots of women were nice to look at. It didn't usually guarantee he'd pay attention for long.

But she wasn't wearing a drop of makeup. Not a drop. She was clean, pristine, played down and simple. She shouldn't have stood out as she did. But where other women tried, she didn't bother. She wasn't trying to make you look. She wasn't flashing those perfect tits of hers or inviting you to stare at her tauntingly tasty ass. She was comfortable in her skin and clearly in command.

Was it the chase? Was that what he liked so much about her? She had signs flashing around her that clearly said HANDS OFF. Did he simply want to put his hands on?

Maybe.

Curious about it, Leon leaned away from the counter and tracked her a little through the gathering. It was a little stalkerish, maybe, but it was also what he was trained to do. He was trained to locate a target, secure it, and move in when the opportunity arose.

She paused to speak to a handful of people near the staircase. Leon sipped a little liquid courage and turned when a woman with a big smile stopped to flirt. He gave her all the smiles and the soft compliments. He was trained to do that too.

It was likely, in their kind of business, that Jill was often looked at like she was either something to fuck or something to protect. He was betting she counteracted that by simply taking the sex off the table. She dressed like a nun and acted like an ice queen. It kept away even the most eager of suitors. It helped, tremendously, that she was also good at her job.

She wasn't looking for attention - and he was tracking her around the party like a pervert planning to kidnap her.

He wasn't this guy. He kind of resented her for bringing it out of him.

Jill was in the middle of some kind of debate about the use of nuclear weapons on B.O.W.S. when he passed behind her. Testing her, his hand slid against her butt as he did it. Just a brush, simple, unobtrusive maybe even unintentional if she wanted to see it that way.

But she stiffened.

Sadly for them both, so did he. But it wasn't his back and it was happening as it remember what that butt looked like out of that ugly skirt.

Annoyed, he turned left and helped himself to the first open doorway. The empty office was as sterile as the rest of the building. It was devoid of pictures and personal knick-knacks - nothing but a shiny mahogany desk and a beige chair.

Blowing out an irritated breath, Leon leaned against the wall by the door. He let the thrall of muffled sound descend. He ignored the voices and all the talking. He heard the laughter. He heard the conversations about anything from bombs to baths for babies. He listened with his eyes closed and reminded himself there was nothing wrong, at all, with having a crush on a girl.

That was normal, right? Even if his life hadn't been normal since he'd driven his Jeep into a town turned into a nightmare. He never regretted covering for Claire, never, but part of him was aware that it had cost him his freedom. There was nothing else for him now but the job.

Jill was the last thing he remembered that wasn't tainted by terror and loss.

There was nothing wrong with coveting that - a little.

Nodding to himself, he started to lean away from the wall and head back to the party.

And she said, "You always the type to grope and run?"

She was joking, but she wasn't smiling.

Leon dropped the glass in his hand and let it plunk on the carpet. He grabbed her face and curled his fingers around the back of her neck to drag her forward, but he didn't need to. She gripped his tie and shoved him against the wall.

In the heels, she still had to go on tiptoe to kiss him. His fingers mussed her ponytail when he jerked her flush against him. It was such a desperate kiss that there wasn't much time to do anything but let it happen.

She tugged his ponytail out to let his hair fall around their faces so she could grip handfuls of it and bring him to her. Forceful, she met him like a hurricane hitting a tornado, where they touched they tore down everything but each other. He wanted to rip off her clothes and get closer but his hands were too busy filling themselves with her butt to drag her up to him.

Jill's mad desperation was matched only by his painful need. They kissed until someone called her name. Abruptly, she shoved him back against the wall and volleyed her eyes over his face. Flushed, she was disheveled and incredible. He was fairly sure he looked as bright-eyed and wild as she did.

Her hand slid against his groin and rubbed. He grabbed her face to drag her back and the person called, "Jill!? Where the hell did you go?"

Jill's other hand slapped against his chest to shove him away again. Leon bumped the wall, roughly, and she simply walked out of the room.

Panting, pulse racing, he listened to her answer, "Hey, sorry...I had this itch that needed some private scratching."

Shit. He understood that.

The nearly wild amusement trickled out of his mouth on a hoarse laugh as he bumped the back of his head against the wall. Apparently, he was leaving the grand summit with an ugly mug, a new assignment, and a pair of blue balls.

Muttering quietly, he saluted the shadows, "Nice to see you again too, Jill...shit."

Good girl, his ass. That girl? She was _nothing _but trouble.

* * *

**Santa Marta, Columbia - 2002**

* * *

He could hardly move he was so sore. Nothing like a rousing fight with a former colleague to leave you battered, exhausted, and mostly begging for relief. From the chair in his seaside shanty, Leon stared at the bottle on the table.

Painkillers.

Would they?

It seemed like they'd just masked the physical pain and open a door to the mental. At some point in this journey of his, he'd missed a step. He was roped into the path, sure, but he'd chosen to walk it. The choice was his to protect Claire on that day when the adrenaline was still thick and the battle just won and the joy of survival thick with the regret of all those he'd left behind to save his own worthless ass.

He'd chosen the mantle of reluctant hero. He'd said yes when they'd blackmailed him with Sherry's safety. He'd done that.

He would have found his way to the fight anyway. After what he'd seen, there was no other way but to destroy Umbrella. He'd known that. So saying yes, accepting their training, becoming their sword against the shadows...that worked for him anyway. Why not?

But the horrors of it kept compounding. He'd had a panic attack, nearly, the second Amparo had begun to run red with the blood of the damned. Not again, he'd thought wildly, and almost abandoned his damn mission to run for the hills. Why did the dead haunt him?

Why couldn't he just get away from it all?

Manuela was the only reason he was still alive. He knew it. He accepted it.

She'd jumped in front of him and spared him a massively ugly death.

A brave girl barely old enough to drive.

And she was somewhere now being examined and picked apart like a test subject.

The swamp of guilt was all around him. Sometimes, when he was trying to sleep, he'd picture all the faces of those he couldn't save in Raccoon. They wouldn't let him rest. He was undead, in a way, because there was no chance for him to lie down and stay down.

A painkiller would do that. It would put him down. That was the point, right? To grant oblivion to the struggling.

His hand closed around the bottle and brought it closer. He took off the cap and dumped one of the big white pills into his palm. He hesitated, shrugged, and tossed it into his mouth.

Sometimes the oblivion laced with ghosts was better than the world saturated with monsters.

As he set the bottle down on the table, he turned it over accidentally. The little white pills spilled over the file opened and waiting there. Pictures and reports from various witnesses absorbed the blow of blessed relief.

Leon chucked and sipped some water to swallow the pill. His not aching arm drummed a finger atop the picture cocked sideways beneath three pills. Was it fitting she had drugs on her?

She was kinda like one.

Jill Valentine stared up at him from a glossy still somewhere cold. Her hair was tucked into a puffy white hat. She had on a coat that fit snug and simply to her body. She had a communicator tucked in her ear. The photo wasn't about her. She wasn't even the focus of it. She was just in it so the photographer could snap the enormous warehouse behind her.

Why did he have the hots for her like this? It was irrational. Usually you fucked a girl and made your peace with that. But this one...she just wormed her way in and wouldn't leave. Like a parasite?

Jesus. He worked too much. Even his sex references were bio-warfare related.

His side throbbed like a bad tooth and had him shaking his head. Blue balls or not, he needed to sleep.

There it was, officially, he was a wuss. Aching, he rose from the table and made his way to the bed. Easing down, he finally laid flat on the comforter. The phone stared at him with judgement until he picked it up and dialed a number.

After some pretty heavy Spanish flirting and overt cajoling, he was connected to the States as the line rang.

On the other end, a familiar voice greeted, "Who's this?"

Charming thing she was, really. And he answered, "You always answer the phone like that?"

After a halting breath, she answered, "How'd you get this number?"

"...child's play."

"You stalking me?"

He laughed, hurt himself, and grunted, "Ow. Don't do that. You amuse me, I might break another rib."

Concern in her voice now, Jill answered, "You break it stalking me?"

Leon chuckled, groaned, and tried to curl on his good side, "Have mercy. Please."

To which she replied, "Never. Haven't you heard? Ruthless."

"I have indeed. What do they call you? The Master of Unfrocking?"

The silence dragged out. He finally coughed to fill it, hurt himself again, and grunted in pain. Jill filled in the silence with a smooth, "You deserved that. What a terrible way of asking me what I'm wearing. You're as bad at phone sex as you are at making jokes."

"Hey! Hey hey hey,"Good-natured and enjoying it, Leon rebutted, "Don't blame the jokes. The jokes are above reproach. The pain makes me a bit of a juvenile pervert."

Without so much as a second to retort, Jill zinged him,"More like a rookie one. Bum psh."

Yep. He kinda liked her. It was annoying. "I hear you have a thing for rookies."

She stopped eating whatever she'd been enjoying on her side of the phone. "...touche."

"Thank you," He managed to sound magnanimous before he ruined it with, "Now what are you wearing?"

Jill finally chucked and gave up. She leaned back in her pillows on her bed and enjoyed him. "Nothing. My air conditioning died. So I'm going commando."

Floating a little on the pain meds, Leon murmured, "...I'm gonna pretend that's true. I didn't get to spend enough time on top of you last time, Jill."

Amused, Jill teased, "Oh? I remember you being up there for a good amount of time. Don't sell yourself short, my friend."

Woozy, he returned without thinking, "Mmm. But I didn't get to see your face. I like your face. I wanna watch it when I'm inside you."

Jill froze with her sandwich halfway to her mouth again. Her heart thumped. She liked that. He had some silver on that tongue that was always tripping itself up with bad dialogue.

Feeling warm inside, she cooed, "Yeah? What are you doing right now? Wanna come over?"

Damnit.

There were moments when he hated being who he was. This was one of them. With a note of real regret, he told her, "...I would. You have no idea how much I would. But I'm on the other side of the world, I think."

Disappointed, she pouted, "Maybe not. Where are you?"

"Columbia."

"...South America?" Surprised, she laughed a little, "You're calling me from South America?"

Slurring a little as he headed into sleep, he answered, "Yup. Long mission. Longer day. Lots of pain. I just...I guess I just wanted to hear your voice."

Oh. Oh oh oh. He was on painkillers. It was clearly making him loopy. Jill soothed him, "Get some sleep, hot shot. You'll regret this phone call in the morning. I promise you."

"I won't." He denied it and the phone slid down his cheek as he added, "Are you wearing a skirt?"

She was still laughing as he drifted off and Jill sat there, just for a moment, listening to him sleep. She a sneaking suspicion the person feeling loopy tomorrow? That just might be _her. _


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Three:**

**Dependence**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**Baku, Azerbaijan - 2003**

* * *

It was starting to turn cold, even here beyond the mountains and just a breath away from the Caspian Sea.

Jill stood with her hands tucked into her pockets, watching the gray light of the brewing dawn as it tried to surge above the fog and find the horizon. The cold would be worse in the mountains, she was sure of that. But they were prepared.

In a few short weeks, it might all be over.

The push to stop Umbrella had been an obsession for so long that she wasn't quite sure what came next. If they won here, if they stopped them, what would it mean for the rest of the world? We're they naive enough to think that the end of Umbrella meant the end of bio-terror?

She wasn't. She never would be. She knew, like Chris knew, that this was just a stop on a never ending road. If they closed one door, it would simply open a dozen more. Until Albert Wesker was in the ground, the fight would go on and on and on.

What she couldn't begin to understand was that it went so much deeper than Wesker. He was just the tip of a terribly endless iceberg bound to sink more ships before it was done.

She was grateful for the tip off about this region. She knew it was Kennedy who'd gone in and come out with control of the once neutral camp that had belonged to a former Russian defector. She'd offered sanctuary to any who sought it, including soldiers that had killed in the name of a war that had cost her her husband. The desperate push to shut her down had nearly cost them the toehold they had in the region.

Whoever had sent in Kennedy knew what they were doing.

It took him a month to infiltrate the sanctuary, gain her trust, and take her out. They were, even now, moving into her camp to take over and use it as a base of operations. Kennedy was rapidly becoming known as the guy you sent in when you needed it done quick, quiet, and with as little mess as possible.

Jill turned away from the view she had atop The Maiden Tower. The twelfth century tower had once stood guard over the Old City. At one point, she was certain someone had told her that the walls had been impenetrable. Clearly, they'd never been scaled by Kennedy.

It was a curious thing to turn around the base of the tower on the stone steps and find herself face to face with the man she'd just the last few minutes thinking about.

He was standing in a heavy leather coat beside Chris and Barry. She might not have known it was him if it wasn't for the unforgettable cheekbones. He looked like a grown up. The sock hat on his head was a pale tan. The collar of the coat he wore was fur lined. He was nicely insulated against the chilly morning.

Chris caught her eye and waved her over. Chris had finally caught up to the muscle he'd been chasing since she'd met him. He was heavily built, looking a bit like a muscled wall beside the smaller frame of Kennedy. Although there was nary an inch between them in height, their builds were night and day. Barry, between them, was somewhere like the place he stood - straddling fit and huge.

Chris wore a heavy sweatshirt in pale gray. It was hiked up his forearms in that way he had that said he hated the constriction of winter clothing. Unlike the other two, he'd foregone the hat altogether and his ears were pinked by morning chill.

He had a five o'clock shadow at six a.m., but that was just part of the Hungarian side of his heritage. It accompanied the thick eyebrows and the dense hair on his arms. Jill stepped up beside him as he was saying, "-without even breaking a sweat, this one. She slit his throat and just kept going."

Jill rolled her eyes and laughed, lightly, "You make it sounded cooler than it was."

"No way to do that," Chris told her, looping an arm over her shoulders to squeeze her companionably, "It was pretty bad ass."

It was a curious thing to notice that both she and Kennedy were very, very carefully avoiding looking at each other.

Barry tugged his cigar from his mouth and commented, "You're saying this about the same girl who got herself locked in a room that almost made her a sandwich."

Jill rolled her eyes again, "That joke is tired, Burton. Get some new material."

Barry chuckled, heartily, and winked, "Chows on, kids. Stop standing around comparing dicks and get some grub." He shook hands with Kennedy and added, "You did good work, kid. Seriously. We'll take it from here."

Chris squeezed Jill's shoulders one more time and declared, "I better get in there before I miss out on the bagels. Last time that goddamn Jackass ate every last one." He slapped Kennedy on the shoulder and told him, "You look like shit. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Claire always harps on your looks. If I had a dog like you, I'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards."

And Kennedy told him, "My ass is still prettier than you're ugly mug, so at least I've got that going for me."

"I guess," Chris patted him hard enough that Leon winced, "Maybe the pretty face compensates for the puny frame. For god's sake, eat some breakfast before a stiff wind blows you away."

"Well at the least wind _can _get stiff. Sources tell me its the only thing that can around you."

Chris chuckled, gave him the finger, and moved toward the swirl of a chimney across the cobbled street.

A handful of seconds passed before they both realized they were still standing there, silent, and staring ahead at the building full of laughter and light. Finally, Jill glanced over at him and said, "...he thinks anyone who doesn't polish their guns a half dozen times a day is a wimp."

Leon snorted and turned his gaze to her, "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You think I should bulk up like Redfield? Scarf down some creatine and turn my arms into a second set of thighs?"

Her eyes twinkled as she said, "Hard to say without seeing the thighs."

They kept staring at each other and grinning until Jill cleared her throat. "Hah. Shit."

Amused, Leon reached up to tug his sock hat off and scratch his head. In fairness, she knew he'd been undercover the last month in that camp, but it didn't stop her disappointment to see his once beautiful hair cut down to military short.

Without thinking, Jill reached up to rub the inch long dark of it. "...what a shame."

His mouth twitched up at the corner, "Yeah? Maybe I'm too old for that long shit."

"You kidding? You kill it."

"You don't like my face without it?"

Her hand lingered and finally slid down to trail over his ear before she drew it back and murmured, "Maybe it's a good face."

"Yeah?"

They both laughed a little and Jill asked, "You still stalking me?"

He slid his sock hat back on and scoffed, but he hitched a shoulder at her to follow him and she fell into step as they started walking. They went right passed the chow hall and veered into the Old City.

Companionably, he told her, "The Old City used to be the main gate actually."

Interested, Jill responded, "Really?"

"Yeah. Your useless knowledge for the day but for about a thousand years, this place saw a pretty steady stream of traffic. The walls were rebuilt after countless wars, but the structure held on that outside wall."

Jill paused to look up at the wall and the tower beyond it, "Do I wanna know why you know so much?"

He laughed, lightly, and shrugged, "I read a lot. I never forget any of it. The perils of photographic memory." He glanced up with her at the tower beyond the wall, "You always go up it like that?"

She nodded, "In the morning. I like the view. It's incredible."

"It's called the Maiden Tower because it's never been taken. It's a virgin tower. All the wars, all the times the city faced invasion, and the tower was never breached. Never forced to submit."

With a kind of respect, Jill answered, "Like Elizabeth is the virgin queen."

"Yeah. It's always a curiosity to me that such strength is often given a feminine edge when they name it."

Jill chuckled as they eased down the base of the steps toward the bottom level of the tower, "Girl power."

"You aren't kidding. Women have been at the heart of power for a long time, just over shadowed by men with big arms I guess."

She paused in the narrow passage to look at him. He'd offered her a hand down the jagged steps out of habit instead of chivalry, she was sure of that. Quietly, she queried, "I really wish I knew if you said that honestly or just because you're fucking clever. You don't think girls are better soft and outside the fight?"

He glanced at her and looked confused for a moment. It was that brief flash of confusion that told her he'd meant it. Whatever else was true, he respected women. In their business, women were often viewed as something to fuck or something to protect. It was refreshing to hear someone refer to them as the power eclipsed by a man.

Leon told her, "You don't have to punch boulders to be strong, Jill. I would never, in a hundred years, underestimate a woman."

Without missing a beat, she teased, "Women? Or just me?"

And he floored her with, "Half the time you're the only woman I can think of anyway. So I might be biased."

Jill turned. Her hands fisted in the collar of his coat as she backed up against the wall and dragged him to her. Shaking her head, she breathed, "Who talks like that? What am I supposed to do with that?"

He hitched a shoulder in a shrug. His palms flattened on either side of her face on the wall and he answered, "Whatever you want. I don't waste time with lies. They're boring. And I could be dead tomorrow. I think about you, all the time. I don't know why I'd bother to lie about that."

Jill zipped her eyes over his face and laughed, hoarsely, "...yeah...fucking clever is what you are. We spent one night together almost five years ago. How can you still feel that way?"

His left brow winged up. He scanned her features and finally told her, "You kidding? There's no one else in the world like you, Jill. It's that simple. It's not complicated. I've been with other women. More than I should have probably. It doesn't matter. Because half the time, I still see you."

Shit.

Her belly dropped. Her eyes flashed brightly in the dark. And she murmured, "...somebody told me you were practically a genius. I really, really, really should listen better. It's really fucking annoying that that should sound a little obsessive, but it really just sounds like the greatest compliment ever uttered."

He shrugged again, looking content with it, "Lifes a gamble anyway. What's the worst that happens here? You don't feel the same and there's no hard feelings? I'm willing to take that risk."

She shook her head and sighed, "I don't want anything complicated here, Kennedy. I don't want a great love story."

"Alright. What _do _you want?"

She licked her lips and took a page from his book to go with honesty, "Sex. Uncomplicated Unpretentious. Unpredictable sex. Don't hold me. Don't make it personal..just..." She trailed off, feeling bad about it.

But he laughed, softly, and finished, "Just fuck you and get out."

He didn't look upset. He didn't even look hurt. He just looked amused. So Jill said, "Yeah. I don't have room in my life for anything else. Is that ok?"

His mouth twitched and he acquiesced, "...as the lady commands."

Jill dragged him down. He met her half way. His hands stayed right where he'd planted them. The kisses seemed loud in the silent tunnel. She skimmed her hands down his belly to grab for his belt as they parted to take heavy breaths.

And she told him, "Maybe I think about you too sometimes."

His eyes flashed happily as she licked the seam of her lips and murmured, "That's against the rules to talk that way, Ms. Valentine. No soft stuff allowed."

"...right. Sorry. Shit."

He thought she was adorable. He let her jerk at the zipper of his coat to get inside and touch him. She didn't even go right for his dick, he thought with a flicker of amusement, she put her hands under his shirt and stroked around his chest and stomach.

When they parted for air again, he asked her, "Whatcha doin there? You're too far north."

She was flushed and beautiful. The big blue eyes he loved about her were heavy with lust as she told him, "...just checking to see if you were skinny. I had to make sure."

"Yeah? What's the verdict?"

Her nails scraped against the washboard of his belly. She curled them around to fell along his delts and back. She tucked her fingers into his sleeves to touch his biceps and declared, "...not skinny. Good. It's good."

"Good?"

"Yeah..." she whispered, almost conspiratorial, "You have fifteen abs or something. Is that even humanly possible?"

He laughed and ducked his head to kiss her again.

Her hands finally made it to his ass to grip and drag him closer. He was too tall so his groin brushed her belly and she let go of his mouth to command, "Pick me up. Ok? Just...you know...hike me up there."

Yep. She was adorable.

Drolly, he inquired, "Is that allowed? I don't want to break the rules."

"Shut up...idiot." Her hands grabbed at his shoulders and she, literally, leaped around his front. He had no choice but to catch her. He was still laughing as she kissed him again.

However, he wasn't her hand made its way over his hip to loop around his dick.

He grunted, she gasped, "See? Shut up."

And swallowed his next laugh with her mouth.

In the narrow hallway of the tower, there wasn't much room. But apparently that didn't really matter.

She grabbed at his zipper as he caught the back of her neck with one hand and put his hand in her pants with the other. And there they were, days away from a huge battle with monsters and death, groping each other in a dark hallway beneath a maiden tower.

He gasped for air as he let go of her lips and wondered, "Is it still a virgin if we fuck in it?"

And Jill laughed, tried to grab a handful of his hair and came up empty with a grunt of anger, "See? Grow the hair back."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Now."

His hoarse laugh made her warm...and then his fingers found her.

He barely got them in her twice before she came. Her thighs cinched around him, he groaned and surged against her fist, and she humped crudely against his hand as she begged, "Don't stop. Ok? Don't stop."

So he didn't. His fingers plunged, her fist kept right on pumping, and he could hear Redfield somewhere on street level calling for her.

Gasping, Jill keened, and groaned, "Ignore him. Ignore him. Don't stop."

Bossy.

It was his favorite type of woman. Who was he kidding? There was nothing that flipped his switch more than a take charge type. So he bumped her hard into the wall, rolling her hips into the relentless thrust of his hand, and did what she wanted. He fingered her until she whined a little, her thighs clenched him again, her body sucked his digits and he came all over her jerking fist.

It was almost unexpected. He hadn't thought he was that close. But one minute, humping into her hand, the next coming all over it. She went right after him, bucking as they sealed lips to quiet the sound of it. She gasped against his mouth, desperately, "shit..shitshitshit..." as her body released.

The ragged breathing punctuated their release. He let her go so she could slide down the wall. Her mouth pressed to the under size of his jaw and she murmured, "Sorry for the sticky mess."

He couldn't help it; he just laughed.

Her hand traced over his belly and wiped delicately on her pants. She turned her mouth up and his came down so they could kiss wetly until Redfield's bellow drew them apart. Gasping, she muttered, "...ok. Yeah. Work. Right...thanks...for the orgasms...and the...you know the making out and stuff."

She paused at the entrance to the tunnel and added, "And the spying...was it bad?"

It was.

But it wasn't the time to tell her about it.

He gave her a soft smile instead, "It was the job. It's done. That's all that matters."

Jill gave him a shrewd look and hesitated, "Do you wanna talk about it?"

He reminded, "Can't. It's against the rules."

Chris called for her again and she hesitated again on the steps. "...so maybe we can talk. A little. Sometimes."

"...ok. Whatever you want."

Nobody could be that perfect. Eventually? The other shoe would drop. She was sure of it.

But she didn't care. She was going to ride that high for as long as she could before the crash. "Are you ok?"

He laughed, a little breathily, "My balls are throbbing a little, but it's not a bad thing. I'm better now than I was ten minutes ago."

Jill grinned, "Shit. Me too. I should keep you around to raise camp morale."

"I don't think Redfield would be nearly as thrilled if I put my hand in his pants."

She laughed, eyes twinkling, "That's his loss."

"I don't know. I would think it's not the same to jerk yourself off as to do it for a angle would be weird."

He was something else. His good humor made her adore him, "Most likely. Although they say those that work together, jerk together."

And his eyes twinkled, "Frightening. And a good thing I don't work with him then."

Jill didn't stop the soft giggle. She bit her lower lip and backed up one set of steps, paused, and told him, " I'm really glad I got to see you again."

Leon winked at her, "Good to see you too, kid."

She turned and fled up the steps. He lingered in the tunnel leveling his breathing off. He couldn't think of anything better than her after the shit he'd seen in the last month. Talking or no talking, watching her face while she came apart almost erased the images of burning bodies in a pile at dusk.

Almost.

But not quite.

He was pretty sure he needed another hit to make that happen. Hell, he needed a continuous drip of Jill Valentine to thwart the nightmares. Instead? He just leaned back on the wall and craved her.

At the top of the stairs, Jill turned back to look down once more. She gnawed her lip. She thought, just for a moment, about running back down them to finish what they'd started.

But the world wasn't going to wait for her to fuck before it forced reality back on her like waking up after a long dream.

The only thing she knew? Right in that moment, she'd have traded all the fighting in all the world for five more seconds of the taste of him. And she wasn't sure she liked that kind of feeling at all.

Sadly? It didn't stop her from knowing damn well she'd keep on chasing it.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Four:**

**Cold Turkey**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**Quantico, Virginia - 2004**

* * *

The winter was coming quickly on the East Coast. It was all crunchy leaves that fell gold and orange from trees that were headed toward hibernation. The winter never made him think of dying, not really, it made him remember what it was like to be asleep, waiting, to wake up on a beautiful spring morning to the birth of a new day. Amused at the poetic rambling, Leon tipped the scotch in his hand to his lips.

The balcony that overlooked the Potomac River was chilly. The laughter and conversation beyond the glass window were muted and muffled. A dinner to celebrate the new President Graham. A man with a plan, it seemed, for bioterror and corruption. He was going to stop it. He was going to change the world.

He was a fool.

Leon studied the water in the dying sunlight. It rippled happily. It was pretty between the shores of people who dotted the grass around it walking and living their lives. They had no idea what the cost was to give them the freedom they took for granted. He doubted anyone did when they slept in their warm beds at night.

Graham wouldn't make a difference. He'd cover up the ugly truth like all those before him. He'd fall on his sword and play the puppet and smile for the cameras. He'd never tell the people he served the truth: that the war they were fighting was happening in their own backyard. That the US government was just as guilty as Umbrella had been for making the monsters that Leon had almost died fighting.

He threw back his scotch with a hiss of pleasure at the burn of it.

It kept you alert. It reminded you that you were alive to feel the rush of it. There were few things in the world that did that.

Leon turned to look back into the restaurant and found his gaze sweeping the people there. Morgan Lansdale, the director of the Federal Bioterror Commission or the FBC. Clive Owen, head of the Bioterror Security and Assessment Alliance or the BSAA. Kent Carver, the head of the bioterror office of US Strategic Command or US STRATCOM. A handful of agents from all agencies gathered around a big table filled with piles of food.

And Jill Valentine.

He paused his gaze. His heart thumped twice in his chest. She was in a skinny black suit with a blue collared shirt under it. Her long hair was loose around her shoulders in a pretty chestnut fall. A fringe of bangs fell over her smooth forehead and graced the tops of her big blue eyes. She wasn't laughing. She wasn't even smiling. She stood at the edges of the group of men and didn't fit in.

He'd heard stories about her. You did, in their business, from other men. How she was a ball buster. How she was a frigid bitch. How she had penis envy. He imagined his mother would box the ears of any man who talked like that about woman in her presence. She'd made it clear from the moment he came into the world that women weren't something you fucked and forgot about. You treated a woman like a lady, always. No matter how big of a bitch you might think she was.

At one point, someone had tried to get him into the conversation impugning Jill and he'd said, "It's gotta be hard knowing she's better in this business than you are. I bet that just chaps your ass all to hell."

After that, nobody really said much about her to him. He knew it was dangerous to come to her defense, that might people might start talking about it. But he refused to fall prey to peer pressure and talk about her like she was tits and ass and ovaries. That kind of guy, he wasn't.

Leon opened the balcony door and stepped inside. He felt the moment she looked at him while he was getting another scotch from the bartender. His gaze shifted to hers. She lifted a corner of her mouth in a tiny smile. He winked and gestured with his head.

There was a small sitting room off the main dining room of the hotel where they were all gathered for the dinner. Leon ducked inside to find it decorated in old fashioned antiques. Elegant. Pale blue and pretty. Not his cup of tea with all the ornate gold and pastel, but he got the idea. What was it? Victorian?

The door eased open and Jill's voice said, "You forgot the jacket to that suit."

He hadn't. He never wore suit jackets. It wasn't his style. The gray slacks and the blood red dress shirt were complimented by the black leather of his shoulder holster. The wing tipped dress shoe he wore? Those were graced with steel toes. Style didn't mean simple. He could still run five miles and whip your ass in his fancy shoes.

But he quipped, "Figured I'd make it easier for you to get to my rockin bod. Next time I'll just strip to the skin and a pair of boots. Or maybe a hat. You think a nice fedora?"

What an image. Her face flushed with half amusement, half excitement.

She laughed. She just laughed and eased some kind of tension he didn't know was there. "With what? A trench coat?"

"With a fedora? Is that a little...dirty flasher in the park?"

"Only if you don't want to be flashed."

He nodded sagely, "You want me to just flash you next time instead?"

"Oh, yeah."

"People might think I'm a stalker, Jill. I can't stalk you around in a trench coat and a fedora. All the other badass agents will pick on me. How about we just cut the middle man and go with a bow for you to unwrap?"

Her eyes twinkled so happily. She'd missed him. It was an odd feeling, "I say yes. You promise?"

"You bet. We talking now?"

Her hands grabbed for his holster and she jerked him toward her as he added in a mutter, "Nope. Guess not."

She was kinda laughing as she kissed him. He let her pull him down and propelled her backward until she bumped against the door. Jill moaned softly and pushed her hands under the holster to stroke his shoulders over the shirt.

She broke from the kiss to gasp, "Silk?"

"Yep." His hand slid down into her pants to palm her over her panties and made her eyes cross, "Silk? I think it gets ruined if it's wet."

She gripped his ears again as they went back to kissing. There was the clink of belts and the metallic whoosh of zippers. He nearly fell over-hopping to get his left shoe off and she kept groping him from behind until he gave up and turned back with one shoe still on. Jill giggled a little as he grunted, "You keep grabbing my ass and you'll never get a piece of it."

Jill half collapsed on the settee against the wall as he tugged off her shoe and got one leg of her pants off before he declared, "Good enough for government work." And made her adore him.

He started to finish undressing her while she jerked open his shirt under his holster to touch his chest and she told him, "Nope. It's good. We're good. This is good."

"Sure. We're mostly still dressed but whatever." He hiked her up onto the settee while she laughed and moaned when he pulled her panties to the side to test how wet she was with his fingers. She humped against his hand and Leon grunted with pleasure.

"...check. Ready. Ready?"

He was something else. She thought he was the cutest thing she'd ever seen.

She affirmed, "Ready."

His hand slid to his back and slapped around mindlessly until he laughed, "Welp...I seem to have lost my pants on that leg. Grab beside your knee there, darlin, and see if you can find my wallet."

"Why? You gonna show me some ID first? I know you're old enough, Mr. Kennedy. This time. The first time? Maybe not so much."

Leon chuckled as she grabbed his wallet and opened it. He reached over her to pluck the condom out and answered, "Good boy. See?"

His hand delved into her before she could answer and her legs tried to give out as she whined and humped on him. Leon kissed her and she ripped open the condom to help him get it on while he shot a palm under her shirt to knead her breast over her bra. Jill finally collapsed back on the settee for him to jerk her toward the end. Her hands scrambled and tugged on his holster to pull him down to kiss him.

And he shoved into her.

Not easy. Sharp. They swallowed each other's sounds of completion.

It was so fast. She lifted her hips to take him and make it that much faster. Her legs wrapped around his flanks, he tilted her pelvis to an angle that made her blood shoot out of her ears, and he hit the spot in her. One, two - done.

She slapped his face without meaning to as she came so hard it hurt. Her needy sheath vice griped his dick so hard it made his eyes cross. Impossibly aroused, he pinned her arms above her head to finish. The settee squeaked and shook and slid a few inches with each hard thrust. He groaned, "Shit." And came.

His hands pinned her down and he fucked her through it. She keened and shook like a leaf as her body squeezed him. He collapsed atop her, Jill oofed and her arms came up to grip his hair hard and make him grunt.

Into her ear, he panted hoarsely, "...good to see you, Jill."

And she gasped out a breathless laugh.

The dinner ended. The evening stretched. They took a walk along the river. He stopped to buy more condoms and had her laughing. "Pretty arrogant to assume you'll need those, hot stuff."

And Leon retorted, "Look who's talking. These aren't for you, Valentine. I have an orgy to get to later."

They ended up back at her hotel and took a bath. She said, "Don't stay the night, ok? That's.."

"Against the rules?"

He was starting to wonder if she knew how many of her own she was breaking.

They had some drinks. She started dancing to the music from the radio she'd turned on. She was in a pair of panties and his red shirt left open over her torso. Leon stood against the door frame from the dining room to watch her.

Something shifted in his belly that was _definitely _against the rules.

She beckoned him with a slender finger and all that dark hair tousled around her gorgeous face. Who said no to that?

His arms slid around her under that shirt. He pulled her close. Their hips moved together as if they'd been made to fuse. They danced in the living room of her suite.

The moonlight was smooth on her back as he dressed in it to leave. But she caught the back of his belt and said, "I said don't stay the night. I don't see anyone sleeping yet."

He should go. He was dangerously close to wanting to keep her. He should go. Caution signs flashed all around her on the bed. Bad. Bad. GOOD.

He slid onto the bed atop her. The red shirt cocooned them as they kissed. Different somehow, he thought, this kiss. Different.

They fell asleep anyway. No matter what her rules said. And she woke him in the night atop him.

That shirt, he thought wildly, his shirt around her naked torso. The swell of her breasts in the silvery light. His hand skimmed up her belly to the base of her slender throat. She had her head thrown back as she rode him.

His other hand slid over her groin to stroke her where their bodies joined. Jill trembled. She gasped high and desperate. He waited to see if she'd do what he thought she would - and she did.

She curled down over him to kiss him as she came. Her whole body shook like she was about to have a seizure. Leon waited again to see if she'd say anything -and she did. She gasped his name as she came.

He wanted to keep her.

It was that simple.

Rules or not.

His hand gripped her hair. He lifted her face to watch her eyes and commanded, gruffly, "Look at me."

She did, gasping, even as he surged up into her, rolled, and put her beneath him to finish. She opened her eyes and her legs and her mouth to call his name again and enchant him. Succubus, he thought wildly, she wanted his soul. Her hands slapped at his ass and raked her nails up his back to grab handfuls of the muscle as if he were a racehorse she was whipping to victory and she was just trying to hold on.

Her eyes started to close and he gruffed, "No. Don't look away."

Jill did, gasping, unable to do anything but obey. Unable to do anything but wrap around him like an octopus and be entranced with him.

A shift of his hips and he felt her go again, tight, a high pitched keen from her open mouth. Her heavy-lidded eyes held by his. He went after her, pinning her hips with one hand and holding her hair with the other to keep her looking at him.

It was her who looked away first when they'd both stopped trembling.

She'd woken him to love him.

As he rolled off her to remove the condom, he wondered if she understood what that meant.

In the dark, after he'd disposed of the condom and washed himself up a little, he found her lying on her back panting at the ceiling. He knew what was coming now. But he hoped against hope he was wrong.

She said, quietly, "I think you should go."

Leon sighed and answered, "I could stay."

"No. I...no. Just sex, right? You should go."

He shook his head as he turned to gather up his clothes. He felt her shift in the bed to look at him. She asked, "You mad?"

Leon laughed, dryly, "Why? I know the rules."

Jill chewed her lip and answered, "You broke them a little."

"Me?" He jerked on his pants in a way that made her wince. Yep, she thought, he was mad. "How so?"

"...you stayed the night."

And now he froze. The sun was just rising beyond the window. He glanced at her and shook his head with a dry snort, "So I do. What about you? You asked me to."

Jill denied this, rolling away from him on the bed. "No. I said don't stay. You know that."

"Yeah. And you just rolled on top of me anyway, didn't you? No hard feelings, right? I said that." He'd meant it. It wasn't her fault he had feelings for her. That was his. But it made him angry at them both. "Just sex. Those are the rules. See you around, Jill."

"You want your shirt?"

"Nah. Keep it..." He paused and looked at her in the moonlight, "...it looks better on you anyway."

He reached the hallway elevator and she didn't come after him.

He wanted her to ask him to stay.

She didn't.

It wasn't her fault he had feelings for her.

But he kinda hated her anyway for it.

* * *

**Albarracín, Aragon -2004**

* * *

The click of her sandals on the stone was punctuated by the harsh gust of her breathing. The beautiful isolated mountain village was graced in sprays of colorful houses. Pink, orange, red -a sunset of simple Spanish architecture against a cerulean sky. She'd hardly been able to sleep the night before. She'd hardly eaten a thing that morning. Her stomach was in knots.

She'd been having coffee when she'd overheard two men talking about it. It was incredible, they were saying, it was nothing anyone had ever seen. He'd taken on a whole village single-handedly. He'd fought things they'd only read about in science fiction novels. His report was said to be the bible of the bioterror world.

He went from a soldier to a legend in a single day.

Leon Kennedy had rescued the President's daughter. A shit detail he'd been given as a lark by the higher-ups had become the thing that would define his career. He wasn't the boy in the bad city anymore. He was the guy who'd saved the world.

Jill had set her coffee down in the break room. She'd gone to the office to find Clive on the phone with Lansdale and the head of Security Service. He'd lifted a hand to wave her into his office. She'd asked, "Where is he now?"

And Clive had touched the file on his desk to spin it toward her. Spain. He'd been extracted on the coast of a small Spanish island without a name. A jut of land that was really nothing. He'd been given furlough while his report and his story was corroborated.

Covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand, Clive told her, "I'm glad you're asking. I want him. Get him to leave US STRATCOM and join the BSAA. Offer him whatever he wants."

_What a coincidence, _Jill thought, _I want him too._

She nodded and turned on her heel.

On the plane, she thought about how she'd cut him loose a few weeks before that. Stupid. She'd panicked. She'd looked at him and seen that look on his face and she'd panicked. In their line of work, there was no room for that face. There was no room for that feeling. It wouldn't end well if he fell in love with her. She'd tried to stop it. She'd hurt him, and she hated herself for it.

She didn't want to hurt him. She just didn't want him to hurt her either.

The little hotel where they'd put him up was cool and warmed by pretty peat fires. The smell wasn't something you forgot. It was common in the countryside as an alternative to gas or fuel. She wanted to apologize and explain. She wanted to take a minute and talk about why she was trying so hard to keep it simple between them.

Jill lifted her hand and knocked gently on the heavy white door of his room.

A handful of minutes later and he opened the door shirtless in a pair of loose gray sweats. He was tousled like he'd been sleeping. She figured he had done nothing but sleep since he'd gotten back. Who could blame him?

His neck was pebbled with welts like he'd taken a shock rod. His cheek had a slash on it that was raised and angry. His mouth was swollen like he'd taken a punch. His eyes ringed in tired circles.

But he was alright.

The second she saw that she gushed, "Oh, god. Leon..."

"Jill? Wh-"

He was barely out the door of his room before she stepped into him. He didn't even get the door to his room closed before she circled his waist with her arms and put her face against his chest, "Are you alright? You look ok. But are you? I didn't know-nobody knew much. I just-"

Her mouth turned up and kissed behind his left ear. She kissed across his jaw and covered him in words as well as lips, "They sent you alone. I can't believe that. Who runs that chop shop you work for?! You should come work with me. Do you want to? Do you w-"

She'd found his mouth.

She stopped talking to kiss him.

His hands hadn't done anything but hover in the air from the moment she'd touched him. But they did now. She felt the tension in him just release. His hands caught her face to tilt it up to him. Jill made a sound of happiness and arched into his body more. Her hands slid down his back and cupped his ass over his sweatpants. He moaned but tugged her face back and whispered, hoarsely, "Wait wait...wait. Jill wait...I need to t-"

Behind him, the cracked door emitted a single voice, "...don't stop on my account. I do so love a good romantic comedy."

Jill froze. Her hands on his ass released. She looked at him in horror as she stepped back from him. His hands slid down her arms as he cautioned, "...hold on. Just hold on."

Jill glanced at the cracked door. The soft light from the room window fell all over the woman in his bed. She was curled in a sheet on her side watching them, unabashed. Curious. Beautiful and black haired with legs so long they might have been ten feet. She gave Jill a sly smile, "Sorry to ruin your reunion."

Jill tugged against her arms and whispered, "Of course. I'm so stupid. I'm sorry."

Leon shook his head desperately. "No. Please don't say sorry. _Just...fuck..."_

"...I think you did already."

She said it so softly. It hurt them both. He shook his head, angry at himself, "I didn't know you'd be here. Just let explain."

"Oh, Leon, no. Please, no. I'm sorry. You don't have to do that. We're not-we aren't any-shit. Just-" She tugged on her arms and he let go of her looking crushed and horrified and kinda desperate, "I'm sorry I interrupted. I'll just-you know what? I'm gonna go to the bar downstairs ok? When you're-"

She shook her head and tried again, "I'll be down there waiting. I have a business thing to..." Jill trailed off. The woman in the bed looked so amused and smug on that rumpled bed. Did he tuck her face down and put her ass up as he took her?

Shit. Jill _hated _the jealousy. It wasn't like her at all. This was why she stayed away from men as complicated as him.

In the bed, the woman mused, "Should I get some popcorn for this show? I enjoy a tearful goodbye. We're just missing the rain and the confession at the airport for it to be trite."

Leon snapped the door shut on her.

The silence curled until she whispered, "Who is she?"

"Sh-"

Her head shook hard, "No. No. I'm sorry. I have no right to ask that. Don't answer it. It's none of my business. I should have called first."

How did he explain Ada Wong? There were no real words here to make it understandable. But he wanted to. For the first time in his life, he wanted to stop a girl from leaving. He just didn't know how.

"I don't know where to start. You can...you can ask me whatever you want, Jill, I'm sorry. Let me tell you about her."

Jill lifted her hand at him as he started forward, "There's no need. Really. Don't apologize again, ok? You're not doing anything wrong."

Leon shook his head. He looked so ashamed. Why? He wasn't hers. Jill lifted her hand at him, "I just can't do this. I'm sorry. I have to go."

She simply wasn't magnanimous enough to sit down in the bar and wait for him to finish fucking that woman. Sleepy tousled? Nope. He'd been sex tousled. Had she kissed him with that other woman still on his lips?

Jill made a small sound of distress and broke his heart. "Jill..."

"Don't. It's me. I'm sorry. Just..." She tossed the envelope from Clive between them on the floor. "Business concluded. I'm glad you're ok. It's...good to see you, Leon."

She turned. She fled.

He closed his eyes and prayed for lighting to strike him dead on the spot.

He wasn't so lucky. In the room, the voice of Ada Wong cooed, "Are you coming back? Or are you going to chase the thief?"

Of course, she knew about Jill. Of course, she did.

In a moment of doubt and weakness, he'd made a huge mistake and taken a spy to his bed. The price was bigger than just his honor. It was Jill and whatever they might have started together. He'd wanted a fuck and boy did he get fucked.

To prove he didn't care about the girl who'd just left him standing in the hallway. To hurt her because she'd never chased after him. Stupid. Emotional.

And true.

Just like that, he'd cut himself off from her.

He felt like he'd just started withdrawals.

He could head down to the bar and bury his pain in a bottle of booze, but it wouldn't feel like a hit of Jill Valentine.

He could chase the high and chase the thief and hurt them both.

Instead?

He turned around and went back to lie in the bed that he'd made.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Five:**

**Overdose **

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**Dulvey, Louisiana -2005**

* * *

The ugly truth was gathered in files all over the table. Spread out, tossed around, they taunted with pictures and truths and tainted history on those who should have been on the same side. Jill tossed the picture of Lansdale down on the top of the heap.

Bastard. Liar. Fool.

Was there no one in the world of bio-terror that didn't lie?

She was ass deep in enemies. The ones she thought she knew turned out to be the least of her worries. The human ones were the real monsters after all. At least a hunter didn't lie, you knew it was there to kill you. But it didn't fuck you first.

Jill spun away from the table and crossed the little cabin to rinse her face. The thing was on stilts in the pretty swamp land. The spring was still new enough and soft enough that it mostly put a sweet sheen on what would later likely be a bug infested wasteland.

The rain was quiet on the roof. The simple wood creaked happily. In the blue tank top and red checkered men's boxers, Jill was comfortably bare foot as she stood at the window and watched the murky water churn with each peppering drop from the sky. She sipped the coffee in her hands and admired the speckled silver sky that burped smoky colored clouds across a canvas that might as well have been a painting.

Dulvey was just a stop over on a trip to Colorado for a debriefing and the beginning of days worth of talks on how to rebuild from the mess left behind with the fall of the FBC. There was a small BSAA hub set up on the far side of the swamp. It was mostly where new recruits went for initial training.

Crickets chirped into the rain, making you remember that life went on. Even while the world fell apart, life had a way of carving a path back from the destruction. She could spend her life hiding in this cabin, but it wouldn't change what waited beyond it.

She just didn't know if there was anything out there worth believing in anymore.

Her eyes scanned the narrow wooden bridge from the shore to the cabin. It was cast in a yellowish light from the street lamp. The sky grumbled contentedly as thunder echoed somewhere in the distance.

The chirping song of the crickets increased as there was the rumble of a motor approaching. The quickest access was by swamp boat. She saw one throwing rain in the distance from the enormous airplane propeller that made up the whole back of the boat. She had a moment to think - _what kind of idiot takes a boat out in this weather?_

And the boat broke the eyeline in the distance. Water split and rippled as the driver circled it up to the dock beside the cabin where her boat was tied down. Eyes narrowed, she tried to figure out who would feel the need to come all the way out here when she as clearly hiding out and licking her wounds.

The wet weather jacket was black with yellow warning stripes. The hood was tucked around a ball cap with a wide red brim. Sports team? Jill narrowed her eyes to try to make it out in the rain and the face of the driver turned up.

The coffee cup froze in her hand.

The engine died on the swamp boat.

The silence prevailed behind the heavy sounds of water striking water.

He lowered the hood. There gazes struck and held each other. Jill remembered to breathe and sucked in a hard breath.

And he moved. He didn't walk, he ran. She dropped the coffee mug to the floor in a clatter and turned to race for the door. She reached for the knob and he beat her to it. The door was thrown inward.

She jumped around his front as he caught her in his arms and carried her into the cabin. His boot kicked the door as her hands ripped the cap off his head and tossed it. The tumble of his hair was thick around her fingers as she dragged him to her.

No words. But actions spoke louder anyway.

The wet jacket was cold on her skin as he hiked her up and fed off her mouth.

There was no bedroom. Just a pull out bed in the center of the living room. He dumped her back on it and reached over his head for the back of the jacket. Jill rose to her knees. She tugged off her top and tossed it. She reached for his shirt to help him do the same.

They came together again in a rough brush of damp skin and excitement. His hands went down into her boxers and palmed her bare ass. She was wearing a thong, which made life terribly easy for them both.

Her fingers deftly whipped off his belt and jerked on his zipper.

His hands curled around the backs of her thighs to jerk and spill her to her back again. He took her panties and shorts in a single move. His feet shifted and he kicked his boots away. She slid a hand down her belly to play with herself in preparation and he laughed hoarsely as he dropped his pants and she opened her legs.

Jill's hands made claws as she grabbed him down to her. She gasped, desperately, "Leon.."

And he rewarded her with a tongue swirling kiss.

She'd never really figure out what it was about him that made her throw everything she knew to the wind. The caution that ringed her life was just void when he was in it. She knew, he knew, they both knew - this didn't end well. She wasn't the only woman in his bed, clearly, and that usually didn't bother her about a man. She was just there for the sex.

She was just here for that too.

But it couldn't ever stay that way for them.

Jill rose up to roll him to his back. He resisted her and they grappled. It was like dirty fighting foreplay. Her feet hooked behind his butt to throw him off balance, his hands caught hers and pinned them over her head. They rolled. They reversed. She turned her hip into him to roll him over her back and flip him onto his. She climbed atop him and pinned his arms to his chest to kiss him.

As she did, Leon scissored his legs up, hooked them around her shoulders and yanked her backward. Jill laughed as she went onto her back. She started to rise up to fight him for control again and he just...shoved into her.

Their legs were pretzel wrapped together. She'd been straddling him. He turned her up, lifted her hips with his, and claimed her. Hilt deep. One thrust. It smacked like lips and turned her laugh to a high pitched gasp.

His hands pinned hers above her head, his hips forced her thighs open for him, and her legs couldn't do anything but loop over his calves and hold on. He wasn't gentle. She didn't want him to be. The slap of skin sounded obscene against the soft rain. Each thrust was so hard it made her teeth clack together. He didn't even bother to look away as he tried to see if he could collapse her pelvis while he fucked her.

Finally, her mouth opened and whined. His hands released. Her pussy actually started throbbing happily with the assault. And she rolled him to his back. The sheets whispered. The wet of her slicked them both as she pinned him and repaid the favor.

She rode up and down on him so hard and fast that she felt the moment he started trembling with it. Her sweat slick hair fell in her eyes as she watched his face. His face was bloomed with color. His eyes hooded. Like an enemy, she squeezed, slapped, and slid up and down on him until she defeated him. Finally, his arms shaking, he grunted, "...fuck.._Jill_..."

And she might as well have killed him. It was like winning. Voice hoarse, she demanded, "More?"

And let go of his hands. His torso came up. His hands caught her hair and curled her back. She went to her side and let him swirl her leg to her chest. He straddled the other one and just obliterated her.

Jill clutched her thigh to her chest to hold on to it. She kept making some kind of sound like _ohgodohgodohgawd. _Without meaning to, her other hand rolled over her hip to slap his chest with each smash of his cock into her. Her body throbbed. Her body opened. Her mouth begged for more.

He fucked her like he'd fill her up and burst her inside with the force of it.

What did they call it? Pounding. He pounded her into the mattress like he'd break her. When her thighs started spasming, he let go of her. She rolled to her belly like she'd crawl away and his hands grabbed her hips to rip her back toward him. She barely got a cry out as he took her from behind on his knees.

Someone was chanting "fuck fuck fuck" over and over. It didn't matter who.

It was no longer a concern.

Jill shoved back on him so hard to meet each other his thrusts that he was relatively certain he'd chipped a tooth. When she was close, she gasped out a warning. His hands caught her hips, one slid up her belly, the other grabbed her hair. He yanked her and turned her head over her shoulder to kiss her.

His fingers slid against her clit where she was pulsing with each slide of his dick into her. He slowed down. She stopped shoving down on him. They both gasped and kissed, as their merging hips became almost painfully slow. She came on a small cry that he swallowed with his mouth.

Jill fell to her face and let him roll her over. She opened her thighs as he came down atop her. They slid together wetly and almost softly. Their hands bound above her head. Fingers linking, legs entwining; they joined mouths as they finished. His forehead dropped to the bend of her neck and shoulder. Her throbbing center fisted around him. Her mouth turned to the side to kiss him.

And his body jerked atop hers like he was having a seizure as he came.

It felt hot in her body as Leon murmured her name again and filled her mouth with his tongue as he filled her up.

Shit.

He collapsed atop her. She collapsed beneath him. Their panting was loud and painful. Her arms and legs octopus held him after a moment. His mouth turned in against her neck.

The rain lulled them to sleep stuck together.

* * *

She came awake in the darkness with him inside her. Her back bowed. Her mouth opened, but the only sound was the clap of skin. Her hands curled against in his hair. His mouth kissed behind her ear.

The rain was still making a cocoon around the little cabin. Her knees were looped over his elbows. Her arms between them and holding on as he rolled into her. She was sore, in a way that said she was well used and happy. But the soft pace was perfect. Her heightened, swollen, and sucking center accepted him like a hug.

When she moaned, his mouth whispered into her ear, "You're so tight. Am I hurting you?"

He was. But not the way he thought. She sucked his earlobe between her teeth and answered, "You feel good. Don't stop."

She was so swollen it didn't take long. Her hand shifted to stroke herself as he eased in and out of her. She made a small shivering cry as she clenched around him. His hands gathered her hair to turn her face. He kissed her - just once, just a brush of lips - and she felt his body seize inside of her. Soft.

Hard.

Wonderful.

He grunted, "...s_on of a bitch.." _And warmed her belly with his release.

Trembling, she wrapped her him close again.

And listened to the sound of his deep breathing while she fell back asleep beneath him.

* * *

The muted sunlight had her eye opening. He was gone. She was alone in the bed. The cold in her vagina made her brow furrow. She glanced under the blankets he'd tucked around her.

He'd settled a frozen package of peas wrapped in a small soft towel against her groin.

Touched, Jill shook her head and stared up at the ceiling. He was the type of man who fucked you so hard you ached and then put an ice pack on your crotch. What a guy.

She could do this. She'd panicked. She'd fled. She'd been jealous and stupid and a _girl. _But she'd been wrong. She could do this. They could do whatever this was without anyone getting hurt.

She just had to bend her rules for that to happen.

He'd tracked her all the way out into the swamp to touch her.

He was either a stalker or the most romantic man alive. At this point? She didn't care which. She only knew she was ready to find out how good a simple affair could be. She rolled over to head toward the shower.

Her shorts and tank top were nicely folded on the arm of the pull out. Her panties? She glanced around. She bent down and searched under the bed. Nada. Gone.

Brows arched, she felt the humor tremble in her belly. He was the guy who took your panties like a souvenir after he laid claim to your cunt. Her hand pressed against her mouth. She chuckled into it and shook her head.

Stalker or not, she kinda wanted to keep him.

The little note stuck to the bathroom mirror made her roll her lower lip under -

_I didn't stay the night. And i__t's not breaking the rules to take your panties. I checked; twice. -L_

She plucked the note off the glass as she turned the shower on. She kinda wanted to keep smelling like him, but that was stupid and girly and not like her at all. Instead? She kissed the little note before she dropped it in the trash.

No one saw her do it, so she figured it wasn't breaking the rules either.

If no one saw you covet Leon Kennedy alone in your bathroom, did it really happen?

She'd deny it with her last breath.

She climbed into the shower and missed him a little.

* * *

As the boat streaked over the water, his phone started to ring. Annoyed to be stripped out of a pretty raunchy day dream about Jill and Ada making him a Leon sandwich, he opened it. "Kennedy."

Hunnigan's voice greeted him, "Leon...there's been an outbreak at an airport in Harvardville. We're going to need you to get there, yesterday."

And just like that his vacation was over.

The story of his life.

* * *

**Harvardville - 2005**

* * *

The day was saved. The outbreak as contained as they could make it. He'd taken enough hits to be pretty sure he'd fractured a rib. But Curtis Miller was gone. Frederic Downing was in custody.

Claire was safe.

And Angela Miller stood in the sunlight looking at him.

She was beautiful. She was Angelina Jolie with bigger tits. She was incredible. She leaned up and kissed him. Claire waggled her brows and made herself laugh.

He'd kissed her in the water too. To see if he could feel it. What was _it_? That thing in him for Jill. That need in him for her. That kind of addiction that was worth dying for.

To test himself, his hands came up and curled around her arms. He tugged her closer. He closed his eyes. She made a sound of happiness. It was a nice kiss. She had soft lips and her breasts were flush and felt good against his chest.

She cooed, "Leon...let's go _diving_ again sometime."

An invitation. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to fuck her. He could smell it on her like an animal. He got it. He did. Girls were always batting lashes and hitting on him.

As he let go of her, he released she'd put her card in his hand. She wanted him to call her. He could. He was a man. She was a beautiful woman who wanted him. He could call her.

He said goodbye to Claire and ran for the helicopter.

It lifted him into the sky as he watched Angela's hair whip around her face. He could call her. Why not?

He leaned forward and told the pilot, "I need you to stop in St. Louis. I'll take a car from there."

"Yes, sir."

He glanced at the card in his hand. They'd have a good time. He'd plow her and make her scream. She'd like it. He'd like it. And he'd leave as empty as his balls.

He let the card go. The wind picked it up and took it away in a swirl.

He was done chasing things that left him empty.

* * *

**St. Louis, Missouri - Savvis Center- 2005**

* * *

She wasn't sure that Rebecca was ever coming back from the bathroom. That girl had a bladder the size of a pea or something. She was always running out to empty it. Jill glanced over from the game to see if she was heading back yet.

When she looked back at the ice, she realized someone had taken the seat beside her.

She glanced right, felt her heart thump and her breath catch, and stared hard at the ice as he queried, "Who's winning?"

Jill cleared her throat before she spoke, "...Blues."

"Ah. Which one are you rooting for?"

She laughed softly, "You kidding? I bleed blue."

He smirked watching the hockey players streak around the ice. "Not a Blackhawks fan?"

Jill snorted and sipped her pop that was in the cup holder of her seat. "No self respecting hockey fan is."

He was leaning forward. His hands were folded between his knees where his elbows were resting. He was wearing some kind of black leather jacket that smelled so good it was painful. The left side of his face was starting to bruise.

The watch on his wrist had a cracked face. Apparently, he'd been busy before he'd come. Apparently, he'd come right from battle. How had he found her?

"You stalking me?"

The age old question. His mouth quirked. He arched a brow and glanced at her. "Do I need to?"

Jill rolled her lip under and shrugged. She looked back at the game. They sat in the sounds of screaming fans and zipping skates for a long moment. Finally, she told him, "I kinda like you stalking me."

Leon chuckled. Jill studied his profile and remarked, "You wanna talk about where you've been all day?"

He didn't look at her. He just shook his head, "No talking. That's your rule."

Damn it.

She liked him. It was time to stop fighting it so hard. Her hand shifted over. Their eyes both stayed on the game.

And his hands unlinked to make room for hers. Their fingers twined. His thumb swept up and over her rapid pulse. She wondered if Rebecca coming to the game had been a ruse for him to replace her while she was gone.

Probably. The girl scientist was always playing matchmaker.

Quietly, she told him, "...you can talk to me. If you need to. I might be the only person in the world who understands."

He turned his head. She gave him a gentle smile. He brought her hand up that was linked with his and kissed the back of it. Her pulse sped up. He touched the back of her hand to his cheek and closed his eyes, just a moment, before he brought their hands back down.

Watching the game again, he answered, "I don't need to talk, Jill. I just wanted to be near you."

She shifted on a sigh. She put her head on his leather clad shoulder. She tucked her arm through his to keep holding his hand. And she murmured, "I'm glad you did. It's good to see you, Leon."

So polite. So simple.

So messy.

His cheek leaned against the top of her head as they watched the game. The Blues were killing it. Apparently, his arrival had lit a fire under them as well. Just like her, they were better when he was around.

After a moment, she mused, "...I get to hate you if this ends badly."

He smiled. He put his nose in her hair to scent her just a little. And he didn't feel empty like he had in Harvardville. Here, in this moment, he felt pretty full.

So he answered, "...agreed."

And they sat in the cold holding hands while the crowd cheered around them.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Six:**

**Off the Wagon**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**Devil's Elbow, Kentucky-2005**

* * *

The guy on the run was named Lorenzo Hostas. A drug dealer who'd sidestepped into black market weapons when he should have gone to college and gotten a real career. He wasn't a guy who knew what kind of underworld he was playing into when he sold his first stash of assault rifles to Javier Hidalgo in Columbia.

What happened next would pave the way for the first sale of a B.O.W. on American shores. He'd smuggled in a sample of the T-Virus in a classic way - rectally via a mule looking for American citizenship. But a major mistake had ruptured the vial and infected the host before the plane could reach American soil. The outbreak aboard the charter plane had caused an Emergency landing in a field outside of a small nothing town called Devil's Elbow.

The pilot and three other patrons had managed to escape alive. The rest had been contained through elimination and sanitation. It wasn't the first time a sample had been set off on a plane, but it was the first time that the host carrying the sample had managed to get a bag filled with eggs past customs. How? Had they simply walked right through?

Sensors weren't set up to detect monsters after all. Just weapons.

The eggs were currently in analysis to determine what would hatch. Avian? Reptilian? And why had the host been carrying them as well as a T-Virus sample? Had they been delivering both to a buyer?

Aloud, Leon mused, "Good afternoon, sir, I've brought this viral agent that was recently in my ass. Will that be cash or credit?"

He shook his head, picking among the dead on the ground as the team aboard the plane began a massive clean up. He collected wallets and contact information for any family. He said a small prayer for peace over those who'd died.

A set of twin girls gave him pause. Maybe six years old. They'd been eaten painfully by the look of their corpses. The belly of one ripped open, the neck of the other brutalized in a mess of exposed blood and bone. He didn't have to put them down. They'd been dead by one of the assault team before he'd reached them.

But the weeping face of their mother haunted him. She was a survivor, off to one side curled around her hands as she sobbed. She'd hidden them in the bathroom trying to save them. But when the plane had landed, they'd thought it was safe. They'd opened the door to their own death.

There was no chance once the first infected had fallen. In a small space, on a plane with no weapons, they'd fought when they could and died where they stood. The stories told by the handful who'd lived were about the brave who'd thrown themselves on the zombies to protect the young or the old or the weak. Human nature to stand for your comrades when all was lost.

One of the survivors was a child. A girl about twelve years old. She'd hidden with her father in the other bathroom. But the zombies had gathered and tried to take the door down. The father had gone out to distract them and lead them away.

He'd never come back.

He was in pieces near the end of the line of bodies. They'd torn him apart.

The other survivor was a stewardess. She'd used her food cart like a weapon to fend them off. She'd hidden in the cockpit with the pilot until he'd set the plane down. They'd tried to get to other survivors but there was no hope for it.

Four people out of a flight of over two hundred.

A tragedy.

A preventable one if they could just get things in place to check for bioweapons. Airport security simply wouldn't budge. It was in the works on a federal level, but Congress was as slow as molasses about things they didn't consider a national emergency.

Leon moved toward the girl who was staring into the trickling rain. The sizzle and pop of the fire being put out by the incoming weather made a fitting backdrop to the grief of such a tremendous loss. The fire was sanitizing the plane, but it was making the survivors feel the loss in a way they'd never forget.

The girl lifted her head. A pretty thing - big dark eyes and thick dark hair in a pair of braids. She reminded him of his sister. She'd always been his best friend. There wasn't a day that went by that didn't wish he could find the time to go home and see her.

Softly, he asked, "Gina? It's Gina, right?"

She nodded and her face crinkled with emotion. "Yeah. They said I can't see my Dad. Why? That's how you say goodbye, right?"

Leon nodded and shifted under the makeshift overhang they'd set up for the crew and survivors. The leather jacket he wore sent beads of rain off like it had banished them back from whence they came. "You're right. It helps. Usually. But your Dad...there's not much left of him."

The truth was awful. But she'd always wonder if she didn't know it. She'd always wish she'd seen him one last time.

Leon added, "He'd want you to remember him as the brave guy who saved your life, Gina. Not that. It won't help you to see it. It'll just give you nightmares. I promise you that."

She looked at his face and shook her head as tears joined the rain on her cheeks, "How can you know that? He was my _Dad. _He was all I had. How did this happen to us? We were going home for Christmas. That's it. How did this happen?"

Leon shook his head, feeling the hard roll of sympathy, "I'm so sorry. I wish I could tell you the answer. But I'll find the man responsible. I'll make sure the man who did this to your father...I'll make sure he pays."

Gina studied him in the cold air. Smart, he thought, she had intelligence on her pretty face under the grief, "...you swear?"

"I swear to God, I will not stop until I wipe this virus from the face of the Earth."

Gina's face collapsed. She nodded. She believed the steadfast determination on him. He looked like a guy who kicked in doors and killed bad guys for those who couldn't. She believed him. He looked like a guy who got revenge for a girl he'd just met. He just did.

Quietly, brokenly, she gasped, "My dog...my dog was on the plane. He attacked them when they came for me. They killed my dog. They killed my Dad and my dog. What do I do now? I have _no one._"

She collapsed forward and he caught her. She curled against his chest and clung, weeping hard and painfully. His gloved hands curled around her back and the back of her head to hold her. His gaze held on the pop and crackle of that still burning plane. It was all he could do to keep promising. It was all he could to keep fighting. For a city that had never had a chance. For a girl he'd just met, a plane full of people he'd never known, and a dog that had died like a hero trying to save them all.

Sometimes you needed to remember just what you were fighting for.

There was a flicker of headlights and the sound of engines. He felt the air tremble as one of the other agents on site told him, "Agent Kennedy, the BSAA is here."

Of course, they were.

The clean up was almost done. It was time for the big guns to sweep in and claim all the bodies to take back to their labs like discarded toys. Leon let go of the girl in his arms as she released him. She sniffled and stepped aside.

Softly, he told her, "I'm gonna have you taken somewhere safe. Do you have any family? Anyone? That you want me to call?"

She shook her head. She sat down on the bench there and stared at the plane. "No one. He was all I had."

Jesus.

Leon turned to the agents waiting near the rise of the hill where the BSAA was unloading. "Get Claire Redfield at TerraSave on the line for me."

He hurried to do his bidding. Leon finished hoofing it up the wet hill to find the other Redfield alighting from one of the big armored vehicles. He was in full assault gear, even though the battle was over here. There'd never really been one. It had been slaughter and then sanitation.

They shook as Chris stepped forward to greet him in the rain. "How bad?"

"Four survivors. Over two hundred dead. One girl without any family. I called TerraSave to see about placing her somewhere safe."

"Shit." Angry, Chris shook his head. The thing about him? He felt every death like it was his own. He wasn't a man who battled the bad guys heartlessly. "Claire will find a home for the kid. I promise you that."

Leon nodded and skimmed his hands back through his wet hair. "Never gets any easier."

"It shouldn't. If it hurts, it still matters."

Not a man known for his words really, but when Chris Redfield spoke, somehow they were always the right ones. It was why he inspired men. Leon nodded and took a deep breath, "There were a ton of papers in with the eggs. They kept talking about a man named Ricardo Irving. He might be the go-between helping funnel B.O.W.S. to the terrorist cells."

Chris nodded and turned to hail one of his men. "Let's find out what game he's playing with peoples lives. My guess? We'll find Wesker waiting behind whatever smoke screen the little shit is providing."

Chris shifted toward his men to head down the hill toward the wreckage. Leon stayed on the rise staring into the rain. He wanted to smoke a cigarette. It was a nearly visceral response.

But he reined it in. Smoking would just get him cancer, it wouldn't do a damn thing to help anyone here. Leon shoved his hands through his soaked hair and peeled it off his face. He needed a drink.

He turned away from the scene to find her looking at him. She'd been in the other vehicle, clearly. Her hair was ponytailed back. Her wet weather jacket graced with the logo of the company she'd founded with the other survivors of Raccoon.

Beside her, someone was informing her of the situation. She nodded and moved away. Leon wove around two other people on the road. He moved behind the back of one of the empty ambulances. The light from the open bay cast his face in harsh white light.

Tired, Jill thought as she tried not to run toward him in the rain. He looked so tired. Without all that hair in his face, he looked somehow young and fragile.

The paramedic had told her it was bad. But she didn't need to go down the hill to see that. She saw it on his face. It was written all over him. He simply didn't walk away from something like this without feeling it in his guts.

It was risky, she knew that, but she risked it anyway.

He greeted her as she drew close, "Lovely weather we're having huh? Nothing like a little rain on such a fine evening."

She stood next to him for just a moment as they both looked out into the darkness. The ambulance was a nice shield. It blocked the rest of the people by the wreck from seeing them.

Quietly, he laughed, but it sounded so sad, "The airlines are getting so cash-strapped, they're gonna start charging me for my emotional baggage."

Even now, it was bad jokes like another shield against the loss. Jill said nothing. She stepped a little closer to him until their sides touched. He filled the silence, "You forget sometimes that it's not just bad guys with big guns and ugly faces. You forget sometimes it's kids. It's kids. I have to put bullets in the heads of kids. I don't know how I sleep at night sometimes."

Jill nodded. Sometimes it was just about being the one who listened. He added, gruffly, "Does it make you a monster if you have dreams about killing people?"

She glanced up at his profile in the rain. He shook his head and finished, "Sometimes the only thing that makes it ok is knowing that eventually? I'm gonna be behind the gun that finishes it for good or die trying."

Her fingers curled into the front of his jacket. It made a sound like only leather could. He turned just his head and dropped it until their foreheads touched. Jill cupped the side of his face and told him, "Such a soft man. You hide it pretty well behind a big gun and a leather jacket."

He made a small sound that was a genuine laugh. "Sure beats the hell outta crying like a girl over the bodies of babies."

Her lips pursed and she told him, "...watch it, smart guy. I'm a girl."

He opened his eyes to lock them on hers so close. Without missing a beat, he told her, "You're not a girl. You're a goddess. How else could possibly know when I need you?"

Jill's belly shivered. She tilted her chin to press their lips together. Soft. Swift. They let go and stepped apart.

With regret, she told him, "...I'm on duty. I should...get back to it."

And he gave her their favorite parting line, "Yeah. I know that story pretty well...it's good to see you, Jill."

Jill went down toward the wreckage. Leon turned into the rain to return to the side of a little girl waiting for a friend. There was no more time for regret.

* * *

With two fingers of scotch in a highball, he sat on the edge of the couch in the suite he was staying in. It would take a day or two to tie up the loose ends here. He was staying with Gina until Claire could arrive to accompany her to a foster family that waited.

Gina was behind the closed door of the suite in the bedroom. She'd been scared to stay alone so he'd promised he'd stay out in the living area and sleep on the couch. It didn't matter. He could sleep on stones if he had to.

He threw back the scotch in his glass with a hiss as a soft knock on the door drew his attention.

Rising, he moved toward the door in his bare feet. The red tie around his neck was loose and dangling. The black dress shirt was crinkled and tugged free of his pants sloppily. His holster was still in place but the gun was in his palm as he opened the room door.

Jill was there in blue yoga pants and a white tank top. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. And he let her in.

No words.

None necessary.

She took the empty scotch glass out of his hands. She set it on the desk beside the television. Her hands returned to the front of his shirt. She wound his tie around her fist and brought him forward.

But it wasn't hands in the pants. It wasn't a fast fuck on the floor.

It was her arms around his neck He tensed before he relaxed. He laid the gun on the arm of the couch and ducked a little down to her. His arms looped over her lower back and he lifted her against his front so her legs dangled as they hugged.

His face buried into the curve of her neck and shoulder.

He whispered, "There's a girl sleeping in my bed."

Jill pressed a kiss behind his ear and replied, "I know. I can't be jealous of a young girl who needed a safe haven. You promised her you'd protect her, right? You said she'd be safe with you."

He lifted his head. Jill's hands slid into his hair. She shook hers. "Leon...this can't end well."

He smiled sadly, "I know. But what have we got to lose?"

She pressed a kiss to his mouth. They watched each other with open eyes. Finally, she told him, "Maybe tonight you don't sleep alone. Maybe that's how you sleep tonight."

His chest ached a little for her. He smiled and carried her to the couch while her legs kept dangling. They curled on it together, Jill tucked into his arm and against his chest. The gun lay on the floor beside them, a silent guardian.

And when she slept, he kept his eyes on the door until he was sure she was safe as well.

His hand stroked the skin of her arm. His mouth touched the top of her head. He inhaled her and felt the first measure of comfort he'd known in a long time.

He fell asleep letting her soothe him.

* * *

Her phone rang in the middle of the night. She came awake with her ear on his chest listening to his heart. It was a nice feeling. She hadn't ever slept beside someone.

Without waking him, she tried to answer her phone.

Chris. He had intel regarding Irving. He'd discovered that Oswell Spencer was alive. The head of Umbrella. The man they thought was long dead. Alive.

The answers they were seeking were waiting for them.

He was going to assemble a mission. Was she ready? She agreed and hung up the phone.

She laid it back on the floor by Leon's gun. As she was leaning up again, she caught his gaze in the moonlight. Softly, Jill told him, "Sorry. I was trying not to wake you."

Leon shook his head. She rolled completely atop him and their legs lined up. His hands smoothed her hair back from her face to see her in the dark.

"I wasn't asleep. Not really. You leaving?"

She shrugged. She leaned up to press a kiss to his mouth. "Not yet. Not right this second. Do you want me to?"

He shook his head no. He held her face for a long moment. Finally, he spoke again, "I don't think I ever want you to go. Kinda scary right?"

Jill laughed. She kissed him again, gently. "I don't know. It feels kinda good. But I won't be gone long. A couple of days. What do you think about...maybe taking a little holiday with me when I'm done?"

He scanned her face and smiled, "I can't think of a reason to say no. Just a fair warning, I _never _get to finish a holiday."

She nodded, looking pensive. "So I hear. Maybe this time we go somewhere without phones."

"Oh. Now you're speaking my language. You own a bikini?"

Jill grinned and stacked her hands on his chest. "I do indeed. Why?"

"Throw it away. You won't need it."

"No? How about a dress?"

Leon declined that, "Nope. Clothes? Where we're going...we don't need any clothes."

Jill's eyes twinkled. "_Back to the Future _huh? Nerd."

"I wanna see you in the sunlight when I'm inside you, Jill. That's about all I know."

Lord. Her heart thunked. She felt her face split into a big grin. "You and that mouth. Make a pun with that silver tongue before I fall in love with you."

His hands twisted a little in her hair. He volleyed his eyes around her grinning countenance. He was tired of feeling the pull of nothing. Maybe it was time to risk everything. So he said, "I'm already there. I'm in love with you, Jill. Tell me you don't know that."

Jill's grin slid away as he added, "I don't know when it happened. It doesn't matter. It's there. I'm there. Any time I'm down, I think about you. It's what gets me up."

Her brows winged up. Her eyes twinkled. He gave her a deadpan expression, "...pervert. But that parts true too."

She laughed and shook her head, "Leon...I have never felt for another man what I feel for you. I need some time to absorb that. It's a big deal. Saying it? It should matter."

He nodded. He tugged her up to press a kiss to her mouth. "I'm not pushing you here. I'm not asking you for anything. I just don't want to waste time lying about it anymore. If you don't feel it too, that's ok. It is. Because I'm not going to shatter. I'm hoping eventually, you will love me back."

Her hands curled into his hair. She kissed him like she'd put herself inside of him and hide there. It was a good kiss. The first one that changed everything and left it all up in the air.

When they parted, she rose off the couch and told him, "When I get back, we'll spend some time getting to know each other. We need to take some time for ourselves, Leon. That's all I know right now."

"I agree. Be careful. I'll miss you, Jill."

She laughed. She dropped a kiss to his forehead as she grabbed her phone. "Mr. Kennedy, I started missing you the moment that phone rang."

He laid on the couch when she was gone and knew one thing was true: she was the only thing in his life that didn't feel tainted by the life he'd chosen. Turns out? Love could save you after all. If you just opened yourself up and let it.

* * *

Three days later it was Hunnigan who ruined his world. She came on the line to tell him about a failed mission by the BSAA to arrest Spencer. Wesker had been there. Wesker had lured them. They'd walked into a trap.

Only one of them had walked out alive.

The mirror across from him reflected his face with the phone to his ear. It showed him end the call without a word. The empty glass in his hand took flight.

He launched it.

It struck the mirror. It shattered the glass. It was loud and horrible.

And the man staring back at him was now in a thousand pieces.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Seven:**

**Rock Bottom**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**Franklin, Indiana - 2006**

* * *

Death was never final in their business. They couldn't find her body. They couldn't bury her. They made a grave without her there to rest. He stood at the edges of the graveyard to watch them have a ceremony without a corpse.

The dreary November rain was fitting. It was gray. It was cold. It was windy.

At the awning where the empty coffin lay, Claire and her brother said goodbye to a woman they'd both known for a decade. It was an intrusion to invade upon their grief. Some might even say he had no right. He'd known her a handful of days in the years since they'd first met in Raccoon City. He didn't know where she'd grown up or what she'd wanted to be as a girl. He didn't know if she was a cat or a dog person.

He'd been inside her and watched her face while the sunset bled the horizon red and gold.

He hadn't really known _her._

Had he?

The loss of her felt like a hole in his guts that opened over nothing. He felt raw and empty and numb -a painful place to be.

He had no right to stand beside those who had been her friend for a decade and grieve.

But he loved her. Maybe from the second, she'd put her mouth to his ear to tempt him, he'd loved her. Maybe that earned him the right to stand there and mourn her.

But he couldn't mourn without a body. He couldn't say goodbye. They'd found neither her nor Albert Wesker. The agent in him swirled beside the broken man and whispered: _she's not dead._

And the hope in his heart was painful.

They started a prayer in Latin. Claire in her black dress. Chris in his uniform. The large gathering of those who'd loved her and lost her. Leon stood outside it and let the emptiness fill with revenge. It touched on the last vestiges of his determination and germinated into a seed of singular purpose: he would find her.

Until he saw her body, he would never give up looking for her. He'd unearth and overturn every person who'd ever farted in the general direction of Albert Wesker. He'd break them one at at time while he scorched the Earth in her memory.

He'd find her.

And he'd kill anyone who got in his way.

* * *

**Ouarzazate, Morocco -Africa - **2007

* * *

The Sahara spread vast and endless until it touched the High Atlas mountains dusted in snow. The heat was a living thing, even as it was swallowed by the chill. There was nothing quite like the gateway to the desert. It was impossible to describe unless your eyes had seen it themselves.

Standing with a shemagh around his lower face, the white of the shirt he wore was bright in the dying sunlight. Leon waited beside the open air desert patrol vehicle, which mostly resembled a dune buggy made of sandy steel. He watched people filter in and out of the beautiful old city before him, shopping, dining, living - and he was waiting for news about death.

The green camouflage around his face flickered in the breeze as a gray faded Jeep rolled to a stop on the far side of the narrow street. A camel followed and stopped behind it, spitting and pawing at the sand. Brow quirked, Leon watched with amusement as Excella Gionne alighted from the vehicle. Beautiful, buxom, the head of the African division of Tricell came toward him in a desert look worthy of Audrey Hepburn. She was somehow classy in a red and white bohemian style flowing dress of chiffon and expensive leather boots in dark beige. The wide lens dark sunglasses perched on her perfect pert nose were beneath the pretty sheer scarf draped above inky tresses.

She came from money, power, and influence and it radiated off her in nearly palpable waves. She was also a woman who was used to getting what she wanted from any man alive. Her curves and her intelligence were a lethal combination that she used, often, to slay any male without enough common sense to run screaming.

They'd shared one particularly generic night together recently that had left them both less than impressed. Excella had...tastes that were, for lack of a better word, _exotic. _As it stood, he simply wasn't the type of man who enjoyed being someone else's play thing but she still made for a powerful ally.

Smiling beguilingly, she sashayed toward him with a file in her hands. "Mr. Kennedy- somehow the desert suits you."

"I'd say the same."

She leaned in and so did he to brush a polite kiss over her cheek that she echoed.

With a wolfish flash of her teeth, Excella told him, "I'll caution you against using too much...crass pressure on the men in that folder, Leon. You might find a more delicate touch is necessary to get results."

He arched a brow at her, "The question is simple Excella. The answer should be too."

"Should it?" She tilted her head at him, "Why do you care so much about a former B.S.A.A. agent? You're so much better than to be wasted on one simple girl."

Leon tossed the folder into the patrol vehicle as he answered, "Sometimes things are much more complicated than they appear, Excella. You of all people know that."

"I do," She pursed her lips and considered before she answered, "You might want to try locating the top name first...I hear she has a long standing history of making trouble for the B.S.A.A."

He slid into the driver's seat and picked up the file. The top photo was a familiar face on all the wrong lists- Sherawat, Jessica: the woman who'd played double agent and nearly gotten Jill and Chris killed some years before on that cruise liner with T-Abyss. Was it possible she knew where to find Jill now?

He started to thank her but Excella was already moving back toward her vehicle as she called, "She'll have a sample you might enjoy bringing in as well. I've left you this camel, Mr. Kennedy...you'll find there are places that your pretty little car simply cannot go."

He watched her slide into the seat and waggled her nails at him.

He had no clue that all the information he needed to find Jill had just sent him on a wild goose chase.

As her car turned toward the city, she said into her phone, "There, darling, I've handled both of our problems. He'll locate Jessica and dispose of her for me. And you are free from his bloodhounding."

The smiling face of Albert Wesker stared back at her on the wide LCD screen, "Good. I do hate to be...delayed."

Behind him, the sleeping face of Jill Valentine continued to float in her liquid prison.

* * *

**Brussels, Belgium - 2007**

* * *

Leon Kennedy was often a man that was sent in to track down a target. He'd been known to do it sharply, swiftly, and without a trace. He was sent, this time, to rendezvous with a spy that was offering intel for a price. Excella had nicely offered him a very clear path to the former B.S.A.A. agent turned traitor.

The open air café was at the base of the Atomium, Brussels Eiffel Tower. The Atomium resembled a helix of steel DNA. It was a child's playful game of Jacks. It was something to see in the early evening light.

Daily flower markets lined the beautiful cobblestone streets. The architecture in Brussels was medieval grand. There was a constant sense of days gone by as one toured the crowded streets. Pubs and bars were common and frequented by tourists and locals alike. Known for its fresh cuisine, the open air markets were plentiful and offered the shoppers a chance to purchase fresh staples to prepare exquisite delights for the palate.

The girl in question sat with a large cambric cloche hat atop a stunning face. The rhinestones on the hat winked. The sunglasses were oversize and studded with Swarovski crystals atop maroon frames. The dress was lacy, black, and had a heart-shaped bodice. It was clearly Wang and accented a tiny waist and long, long, long legs tucked beautifully into satiny white wedges studded with crystals. The dress ended at mid thigh but the train of it continued down the back, curling around her ankles where she sat, sipping a glass of wine.

Dark hair curled from beneath the hat and teased over the clearly displayed cleavage of its owner. She paused with her wine to her lips and lifted a corner of her mouth. The red rose on the table signaled her as his contact. Amused, he moved to join her.

It was simply too easy. She'd been on the run from the B.S.A.A. for so long. Why the sudden turnabout? He'd found her in less than half a day after meeting with Reynard Fisher near Kijuju on the back of that camel he'd been given. Either she wasn't interested in hiding anymore, or she had something to bargain with for her freedom.

Jessica watched him casually but with interest. She'd heard of him, of course. You didn't move in their world without knowing about the Ghost. He was notorious for a variety of reasons. His intellect was above reproach. His dedication it was the women that whispered in giggles about him as well. His face, of course, she'd heard the face was something.

That shaggy hair and that days worth of whiskers highlighted it beneath the square Gucci sunglasses. The Prada peacoat he wore was navy and set off his khakis and the boots beneath. He mixed designers like some men mixed a cocktail; flawlessly.

He sat down across from her. She offered him a glass of wine. He declined and instead ordered a glass of scotch.

She said, "Mr. Kennedy, your reputation proceeds you."

"Ms. Sherawat, I'd like to say the same but I'm afraid I can't."

Amused, Jessica eyed him. "Come to bring me in have you?"

"It would seem the answer is no," He sipped the scotch, studying her, "You are a valuable asset. Deal freely, you go free. We aren't interested in policing double agents. The world we live in needs them. You have the sample?"

"I did have it," Jessica lifted a slim case and shook free a cigarette, "I handed it over this morning to my benefactor."

Amused, Leon took the offered smoke and lit it up. They studied each other in the inky smoke.

"Then I should bring you in."

Jessica smiled, slyly, "You could. Or I could be persuaded to give you the name of my benefactor."

Leon considered her. She shifted her legs and recrossed them. "I'm listening."

Jessica rose from the table. The dress showed all ten feet of her legs to fine example. Leon rose as well and they started walking through the square together. In the wedges, she was only a few inches shorter than him.

She said, "I heard you are known to, often, play fast and loose with the rules."

"Seemingly."

"What does your protocol tell you to do with me?"

They crossed the busy square, moving among the laughing, shopping, excited throng of people around them. She slipped her hand around his arm and cupped his bicep. Amused, he considered his answer.

"Protocol says to bring you in. Without a sample, you're a liability."

Jessica smiled softly. "I have plenty of knowledge to trade you, Mr. Kennedy. I will, of course, go spontaneously deaf and dumb if you were to take me in."

Leon studied her face beneath that hat. And he knew this game well. He'd been playing this game with Ada Wong for years. He'd play it all day if it helped locate Jill. What was he really saying? That he'd sleep with anyone it took to find her?

He was kinda afraid the answer to that was yes.

"I'll trade you your freedom for the right knowledge, Ms. Sherawat. The paperwork attached to bringing you in would ruin my evening. I enjoy the pubs in Brussels. I'd like to do some pub crawling before dawn."

"Mixing business with pleasure?"

Ah.

Her smile was sly. His was wolfish. "I've been known to."

"Then we have a deal. Come with me." She had a room on the top floor of the Meridien. It was a castle of epic proportions. The room was stately, plush, and filled with antiques older than a few generations. The wall was glass and offered the viewer the skyline of Brussels from the La Zenne river to as far as the eye could see.

Leon said, leaning on the wall of the room. "Your benefactor pays you well. This room is easily five thousand a night."

"Money is no object. A drink?" Jessica set her hat on the hand carved wood table.

"Of course."

"Take off the jacket, Mr. Kennedy. I won't bite…yet." She set her sunglasses beside the hat and turned to face him. The eyes were violet. And stunning. The face was stunning.

His were like the Mediterranean ocean. A wild, celtic blue that set off the dark gold of that shaggy hair. She wondered what he tasted like.

Leon smirked and hung up his jacket. The shirt beneath was powder blue and silk. The cuffs were wide and open, the neck the same. The vest he wore was fashionable and deadly. She lifted a brow at the hardware in it.

"We're you thinking you'd need a grenade against me, Mr. Kennedy?"

"I was thinking you were a traitorous spy, Ms. Sherawat. I've played with plenty of them. Sometimes you need more than a grenade."

Jessica laughed, softly, delighted. She said, "You've heard rumors about me. I'd love to hear them."

"I heard that you're a flirt. That you tried to seduce Chris Redfield…and failed."

Jessica sighed a little now. "Both are true. Although I've heard the same about you."

Leon lifted a brow now. "I've never tried to seduce Chris Redfield."

And she laughed again. "Why not? You might have gotten further with him then I did. He's a difficult man."

Leon snorted a little and shifted away from the wall. She offered him the drink she'd made. He took it and sipped, studying her pink, pink, pink mouth.

Leon quipped, quietly, "I suspect he's a eunuch."

Jessica looked delighted. "Is he? I thought he was gay."

"He might be. Why else would he turn you down?"

Oh. She liked that. Her face liked it. "Well, I'm a spy. Hadn't you heard? You don't sleep with the enemy, Mr. Kennedy."

"Are you the enemy? Depends on who's asking I guess. I've played games that weren't entirely good guy squeaky. Maybe we're all bad guys."

Jessica shifted toward him. He didn't back up. The hem of her dress touched his pants.

"I gave the sample of T-Abyss to Excella Gionne. She hired me to steal it from the B.S.A.A. It was stolen from her by Lansdale and she wanted it back. He used it to orchestrate the attack by Veltro. She'll have the rest of your answers on the why."

Damn Excella. He'd known, in his fucking bones, she was double crossing him. He couldn't even be angry. He was more impressed than anything.

Amused, he studied Jessica again. "You gave that up pretty quickly. No games. Nothing. Why?"

Jessica sipped her wine and set it down. She reached over to take his scotch and she sipped that too. "I'm not a bad guy, Mr. Kennedy. I am, however, a mercenary. So I will go where the paycheck is. Sometimes, I have a moment of seeing a better pay out. Excella needed help. She paid me. I helped. She could use your help now, I'm sure. T-Abyss is frightening creation. It needs stopped. Working with Excella will stop it. The B.S.A.A was rotten. Dirty. I couldn't let them have it."

Leon watched her set down his scotch. She slid her fingers down his vest. He lifted a brow at her. "Chris Redfield is a good man. He's an idiot about girls. But he's a good man. He wouldn't have used the sample for evil."

"No. But his organization is rotten. It's safer with Excella." Jessica petted that slick leather on his chest. "And now it won't end up in the wrong hands again. Have I bought my freedom?"

Leon looked down into those violet eyes. "Not yet."

She looped her long fingers around his vest and drew him down to her. Her lip gloss tasted like cherries. It was honeysuckle and cherries. A heady mix. He'd kiss her all day if it ended with Jill beside him.

A hard truth that was easily accepted. He'd lost the ability to chase the higher ground.

She drew away, mouth swollen, "I heard that about you as well."

Gruffly, he answered, "What's that?"

"That you play with fire. Want to play with my fire, Leon Kennedy?"

He laughed a little, softly, "You trying to buy your freedom with your pussy, Ms. Sherawat?"

Jessica shivered at the dirty language. He'd pegged her for it right out the gate. A dirty girl. Dirty. He'd been trained to tune himself into the needs of his prey. He could kill you just as easily with words as with weapons.

She whispered, "Possibly. Is it working?"

Leon flashed a grin at her and answered, "Where is Jill Valentine?"

Surprised, Jessica let go of him. "...what?"

As she started to back up, he caught her wrist to drag her into him. She let him, amethyst eyes flashing with excitement, as he returned, "I know, better than anyone, what it means to need contacts on both sides of the law, Ms. Sherawat."

"...Jessica." She cooed it and licked his mouth. He let her, because it didn't matter a damn anyway.

"I need to find Jill Valentine. Tell me you know where she is, and you leave here with your life, your freedom, and a friend in a high place that can make sure the other side never finds you again."

Jessica slid a hand around to grip his ass as she offered, "Excella isn't just playing savior, _Leon..._she's playing God. Ask yourself who she's playing with, and you'll know where to start looking for Jill Valentine."

He scanned her face until she finished, "There's only one man with enough balls to try to take over the world. You have a friend in red who can help you find him."

_Wesker._

His jaw clamped shut as he let go of her arm. "What do you have on him?"

Pouting a little, Jessica shrugged and went to fix another drink, "Nothing more than you, I'm afraid. Excella is usually very protective of her playmates. I can tell you this - Valentine? She's not dead."

He'd known. He'd always known. But hearing it aloud? The truth made him dizzy. Leon put a hand on the bar, "Where is she?"

Jessica shrugged a shoulder, "You're gonna want to look into Ricardo Irving. He's their mule between Tricell and Wesker's underground organization. I'm pretty sure he fed them false intel to get them to that castle."

"How?"

"Because it's what I would have done too." She offered him the scotch, "I can get you in touch with Irving directly, but you're gonna need a reason. I would suggest using Ada Wong for the first time in your life like an asset instead of a nuisance."

They held gazes as he took a sip of the scotch, "You seem to know a lot about me."

"...that's my job." Jessica offered him a cigarette from the slim silver case on the bar, "I might like to play, Leon..but I'm very good at my job."

He declined the cigarette as he went for the door, "Stay available, Jessica. I'll be in touch."

As he opened the door, she called, "You could be in touch all you want. Why don't you stay and offer me...terms of surrender?"

He could. He wasn't exactly a man who declined an easy lay. He'd spent his life avoiding anything real for lots of reasons, but in the face of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jill was alive somewhere out there?

He was no longer interested in anything but finding her.

So he snapped the door shut without another word.

He'd let a wanted traitor go free. In one hand, it was something that happened in their world everyday. A necessary evil to fight the bigger fish and let the guppies swim free. He was usually irritated about the necessity of it.

Not today. Today he'd have traded every last bit of his own dignity to find a single shred of proof that Jill was out there waiting. He was officially a man without a thing to lose. He'd beg, borrow, steal, lie, or trade whatever it took from now on to find her. They'd created the perfect machine to scorch the Earth to find her. They'd trained him to do whatever it took to finish a job.

If he pushed that hard for business, what did they think he'd do when it was personal?

Apparently, the question that hung above him was this: What would he risk to save the woman he loved?

The answer? That was simple: Everything.

So he said, quietly into the dying sun, "Hold on, Jill...I'm coming for ya."


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Eight:**

**Arisen**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**Helsinki- 2008**

* * *

He sat in the chair with his hands between his knees. Behind him, the wall was sprayed in blood. It was splattered in a strange spray pattern over the left side of his face. Arterial spray did that, spurting out in a way that reminded one of a hose with a thumb across the end to block it and increase the spread pattern. The popilteal artery was a squirter when you pressed down on it.

He'd broken the knee cap first before he'd nicked the artery. The crunch and drip of blood and broken bone lingered in his ears. He'd applied a tourniquet at the top of the thigh to tampenade the wound until he was done interrogating. His victim had lost three fingers and an ear before it was done as well.

But it was done.

His bloody lips curled around the words as he spoke into the phone, "Africa. Irving is in Africa."

The corpse in front of him was a mess. Tortured within an inch of its life and left to bleed out while it cried. Just a man. A man connected to the wrong people. A man without a family or a past or a future.

The wallet on the ground in the blood was open. In his left hand, Leon held the one picture he'd found inside it. A little girl, about six years old, laughing and in the arms of the dead man in the chair. His daughter?

It didn't matter. She'd never see him again.

His bloody thumb swept across her smile - and the numbness inside him was more frightening than anything else.

* * *

**Alexandria, Egypt- 2009**

* * *

The sounds of a struggle echoed down the hallway. As he moved, Leon listened to the words: _Attack. Aggressive. Severely unstable._

He turned the corner to find the padded chamber where they kept her a battleground between orderlies and the ghost of Jill Valentine.

It had to be her ghost. The phantom had her face, but the coloring was all wrong. Her pallor was pale and tired. Her hair hip length and icy blonde. Her eyes were arctic blue. She was muscled in a way that said training and rigorous conditioning. Whatever prisoner she'd been, she hadn't been idle.

She was in a paper gown that gaped at the chest to give the viewer glimpses of that incredible bosom of hers. Her bare feet were planted for attack. Her hands held a scalpel as she warned."

"I will cut my own fucking throat! Do you hear me!? BACK OFF!"

As she shifted, he saw the scars all over her chest. They were legion. They were spread out and singed pink like burns in some places. He'd heard the whispers about her captivity. He'd heard she was controlled by some kind of virus and a device.

He was seeing the proof of that now.

She looked like a raging viking shield maiden about to do battle with her foes.

The doctor in the room tried to soothe her, "Ms. Valentine...we just need a small sample of bloo-"

"NO!" She shouted it and had him cowering. The big muscled orderlies between her and the doctor didn't back off. "No more blood. No more tests. No more poking me and prodding me and sticking things in me. No. Get out of my fucking way and let me leave. Now."

The doctor spoke again, tremulously, "We can't be sure of the affects, Ms. Valentine. We can't. You might hurt someone. You can't leave here."

One of the orderlies took two steps toward her and she laughed and reversed the scalpel from her throat toward him. "Don't be stupid. Don't. I will kill you while before you take another step."

Surely they weren't that stupid.

They were. The other one tried to get her in a rush and she spun and slashed his palm open before she drove a kick into his knee. Her bare foot was strong enough to send him to the ground on the other knee.

The second orderly grabbed her hair in his fist and jerked. She spun the scalpel on him and he caught her wrist to hyperextender her elbow. She reared her head back and smacked it into his mouth. With a shout of pain, the man threw her away.

She hit the bed and took it with her in a skid into the far wall. It struck and she was already pushing up to rise when he grabbed her hair to jerk her up again and the second orderly moved in to...what? Hit her?

Surely they were kidding.

Leon chucked phone in his hand and it smacked the guy in the back with his fist cocked. Surprsied, he turned and got a matching fist in the face for it. It set him on his ass on the floor and sent him sliding with a hand over his mouth.

The orderly holding Jill turned in surprise and Leon advised him, "Don't."

But he didn't listen.

He let go of Jill and reached for Leon. Leon ducked, put his shoulder into the big man, and grabbed his belt with the effort. The momentum tossed him up and over until the big guy landed on his back on the floor.

To his surprise, Jill leaped on his back and had Leon swinging around with her riding him. She put the scalpel to his throat and hissed, "Thanks for the help, big hero, now walk toward the door and get me out of here."

He did. He walked with her on his back and a scalpel at his throat. She kept one hand in his hair and her legs wrapped around him from behind like an octopus. As her hostage, he was completely at her mercy.

Not really, but he let her have the power of the moment anyway. It cost him nothing, and it got her out of the door of the facility.

The moment they cleared the gates, she demanded, "Where is your car? I don't have time for games here. Your car - now. Before they send back up and I give your throat a big bloody grin."

Without a word, he turned toward his dark sedan. Releasing the locks, he offered her the keys over his shoulder and she shook her head, "No. You drive. Now."

"You have to get off my back first."

She slid down his back but grabbed his belt as she backed up to the car. She backed into the drivers seat and tugged him in after her. With her perched on her knees in the passenger seat, she kept the scalpel on his thigh as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

As they turned down a side street, he heard the sirens blaring the signaled the arrival of the cavalry.

She told him, "I will cut your goddamn femoral if you stop this engine or get brave. You hear me?"

He nodded as he followed her directions. She had a strangely clear knowledge of the city that impressed him. How long had she been in Africa? Not just confined to Kijuju apparently.

"Turn here. Now."

He turned into an alleyway as a blaring police car soared past moments later and barely missed them.

After about ten minutes of evasive driving until the sun began to set, he finally spoke, "...I missed you, Jill."

Surprised, she glanced at his face instead of the dark street. Her eyes narrowed. She seemed to be trying to figure out who the hell he was. It irked him a little that she didn't remember him.

But maybe she'd been brainwashed.

She said, "Pull in here and put the car in park."

He turned the car into a dark covered parking garage and into a space near the back end. She slapped the button to kill the headlights and hit the one overhead instead. It put dreary yellow light on his face as she caught a handful of his hair and turned his face to her.

She shifted the scalpel to his carotid and advised him, "No sudden moves. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Take off the sunglasses..._slowly._ I can't fucking stand sunglasses at night."

He did, easing the expensive frames down his nose as he answered, "It wasn't night when I put them on."

The second the glasses slid off his nose, she lowered the scalpel as her angry face collapsed into complete shock. "Leon?!"

He shrugged where he sat, watching her face, "Depends on if you plan to stab me or not, I think."

Shaking her head, Jill let the scalpel fall to the floor in the backseat. She let go of his hair to cup his face. She was looking at him like she'd never seen him. They stared at each other until he finally asked, softly, "I wasn't fast enough...I swear to _god _I tried to find you."

Her hands trembled on his face. She shook her head. He filled the silence again with a desperate avowal, "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

Her eyes closed. She shook her head in denial again and dropped her forehead to his. With a sound like surrender, his hands came up to touch her face like his. They held on until she broke first with a small whisper, "...you knew I wasn't dead. How did you know?"

And he answered, gruffly, "Because I wasn't ready to let you go."

Jill's breath trembled. She rubbed her mouth to his and shivered before she told him, "...you won't want me when you know what I've done. What I became. What I _am."_

His hand shifted. It fisted in her hair and drew a small gasp from her mouth as he answered, "There is _nothing_ you could ever do to make me stop wanting you. Jill..._Jill..._you're alive. You're _alive."_

She tilted his face up a little and pressed their lips together. His whole body just angled toward her like an offering. The complete trust of it left her breathless. She whispered against his lips, "I could kill you before you could blink. Leon...I'm not Jill Valentine anymore. Not like I was. I can't...I don't-I don't know how to turn it off."

Her fingers slid against the fluttering pulse below his jaw, tucking there to feel the beat of his heart as he asked, gruffly, "...what?"

"The need. He...I...it's like a drug, Leon. The want of it."

They held eyes in the dark car as he finally asked, softly, "What need?"

And she confessed, harshly, "The need to kill. He made me his puppet. I was his dark weapon. I killed for him, because I couldn't say no. I couldn't do anything. The P30, the device...it made me a vessel to his will. I don't know how to stop feeling it."

He tilted his head at her face that stared at her hand on his neck, "What?"

"The hunger." She lifted her eyes back to his face, "I want to rip your throat out."

After a handful of moments where they continued to stare at each other, he finally told her, "Do it. If it makes it easier to breathe, do it."

Jill shook her head no. She scooped his hair back off his face and studied him before she spoke, softly, "...I fucking forgot how handsome you are. How did you find me?"

He said nothing. She tugged his hair and made him gasp a little but he stayed mum. Finally, she demanded, "What did you do, Leon? I know Chris was out there digging, but Chris would never hurt anyone to find me. What did you _do_?"

She tugged his head back and he finally spat between clenched teeth, "What I had to. I'd do it again...and again...and again to find you."

Humbled, she zipped her eyes all over his face and wondered, "..._why?"_

With his face calm, he spoke into the charged silence, "...you know why."

Her hands jerked in his hair again and made him his breath hitch as he hissed with pain. Her face said she kinda liked hurting him. What had she been through? A puppet. A monster controlled by a monster. He wanted to ask.

He didn't know if she'd ever tell him.

Quietly, she commanded, "Say it. Say it out loud. Say it...after all this time."

Without missing a beat, he returned, "I love you."

Her breath hitched as she denied that with a desperate little laugh of derision, "Still? Why?! I'm a fucking wreck. I'm a monster. I was a wreck before too. I'm damaged. I'm broken. Stop loving me."

His mouth smiled sadly, "...I can't. It doesn't work that way."

She tugged on his hair again until he gasped and demanded, "Kill me. Ok? You should kill me. So I don't have to see it anymore or hear it or feel it. Kill me."

His hands caught her arms above the elbows. He watched he panic of that restraint shoot across her face as he told her, "I _can't. _Let me help you, Jill. Please. Let me try."

She laughed and slapped his face. It hurt, it surprised him, but he understood it. It was easier to hurt him than to let him help her. "You can't! You can't! You idiot! You fucking fool! Don't you understand? I can't be fixed, Leon! I'm not a car engine! I'm a monster! I'm a murderer!"

She slapped him again and he nodded, encouraging it. "Yeah. Hit me again. Does it help? Hit me until it stops killing you. I can take it."

She didn't want to hurt him. She wanted him to fix her. But he might be the biggest hero in the world, and he still wasn't a miracle worker. He couldn't fix her. She didn't want to drag him into her darkness and drown him with her.

"..shut up." She whispered it. She jerked on his hair and had him inhaling sharply, "Stop trying to help me."

"...I won't. I won't stop. Hit me again, Jill. I can take it."

Damn him.

She didn't want to hit him again.

Her face collapsed in pain as she confessed, shaking beside him, "...a whole village. It was a whole village once. Women. Children. Elderly. Gathered in a town square and burned alive. He had me lock them in. He had me burn them, because I resisted his control. Because I denied it. He pumped me full of his fucking drug and dressed me like a puppet and sent me out to kill for him. I can't unsee it. I can't forget it. I can't sleep without feeling it. I can still hear them screaming. How can you help me, Leon? How?"

His hands tugged her in. She resisted, at first, before she let him. When he wrapped his arms around her, she panicked. She jerked a little and released she was no longer imbued with power from the goddamn device she'd worn for so long, she was just mortal. She was just a woman. She was just a mess.

His arms bound her close as his mouth whispered beside her ear, "I'm compressing your central nervous system. You'll fight me at first -" She did, making small sounds of distress and panic as he kept holding on, "But you'll give in. You'll give in, Jill, and let me hold you. Give in...I've got you. I'm gonna keep holding on until you just give in and let me."

She felt her body relax from the constant pressure across her body. It calmed her in a way that sent messages to her brain to soothe her. She whispered, desperately, "I don't want to give up."

Leon shook his head and responded, "Not up.._in. _Let me hold you. There is no judgement here, Jill. Ever. _Ever. _What you did...it wasn't in your control. It wasn't you. You didn't choose to be a monster...but I did. I chose it. I can live with myself because you're here. I can feel you and smell you and see you. I can live with myself. I'm gonna help you do the same."

Softly, Jill murmured, "...it won't get any better."

Soothing her, he laid his cheek against her head and told her, "No, but it gets easier to live with it."

Quietly, she whispered, "...maybe I don't want to live with it. Maybe I should walk out into the ocean and just...die with it."

His arms bound her tighter against him. He closed his eyes and prayed for the words to make her stay with him. He prayed for the words to give her hope and said, "I won't let you. I'd just swim right out there and bring you back."

Her blonde hair spilled around them as she put her ear against his chest and finally shifted until she clung. What had he done to find her? She didn't think he'd ever say. She'd never ask.

And they'd both just learn to live with it.

* * *

There against his chest was the first time she'd slept in three years.

When she awoke, she was on her side in the softness of expensive sheets. Her eyes blinked into the semi darkness. There was just enough light filtering in from the bathroom to cast a bar of white across where they lay.

She could feel him in the room behind her.

She didn't know how they'd gotten here. She'd fallen asleep in the car and slept like the dead apparently. No dreams. No nightmares. No panic. No pain. Just peace. He'd given her that but just holding on.

Jill shifted around to look at him where he slept.

He'd fallen asleep in a chair across the room. Half slumped with his face on his fist. The sharp blue button down shirt he wore was open two buttons at the throat. The sleeves were rolled up his forearms.

He was bigger than she remembered, more muscular, denser and darker. That hair of his remained rock star hot. She slid over the bed and discovered she was in a big shirt that was likely his. It was red and down to her knees when she put her legs off the bed.

The suit jacket he'd worn was tossed over a chair beside the desk of the hotel room. He'd agreed to not take her back to the clinic. She knew she need deprogramming and therapy. She knew that.

But she needed freedom first. Just for a little bit. She'd been in a cage of her own flesh for too long.

She needed no boundaries. Just for a few days.

Just a few.

Her gaze turned down to find him bare foot. For some reason, she was charmed by his bare feet. They were cute, objectively, no fat toes or ugly hobbit hairy appendages. She wiggled her toes over to touch his and he murmured something like gibberish in his sleep.

Her butt slid against the cool cotton and she knew she wasn't wearing any panties. He'd undressed her and put her to bed. Did he cop a feel? She knew the answer was no on that too. He wasn't that guy. Not three years ago...but did she really know him now?

Maybe he'd raped half of the bioterror world while she'd been gone.

Maybe he was a pig.

A pig who held you and offered his throat for you to slice if it helped you.

No pig. He was still incredible to her. When Chris had left her to chase Wesker, she'd been afraid she'd die on that floor. Josh had helped her to safety but she'd hoped against hope that Leon might be waiting for her on the other side.

She knew now why he hadn't been.

He'd been eyeball deep in some kind of shit storm he'd made for himself trying to find her. She'd heard whispers in the clinic that he'd been held prisoner in Helsinki and tortured for what he'd done to get the information to locate her. It was Claire pulling political strings that had gotten him released.

Jill slid off the bed and toward him. Without a word, she straddled his lap. He came awake so fast that it made her breathless. His hands shifted like he'd attack her and she bound his wrists to the chair above his head.

Faster, he thought, she was faster than him. What kind of training had she endured?

Both of their breaths came in sharp pants for a long, long, long moment. She didn't let go of his hands. She kept them over his head. After a long moment of silence, her mouth lowered and rubbed against his. He sat motionless, watching her like a mouse watches the snake before it strikes.

Her nose nuzzled against his jaw and her mouth slid wetly against the pulse there. She felt it jumped against her as she sucked the feel of it gently between her lips. Her teeth settled against his skin, just a little, just enough to make his breath catch.

Just enough to let her feel him get hard against her where she straddled him.

She let go of his of his wrists and lowered her hands to his shirt. Her fingers deftly slid one button out and then another. She paused, watching his face, and she liked that he didn't touch her. He laid his palms on the arm of the chair and let her touch him instead.

Three buttons down, she changed her mind and grabbed two handfuls of the fabric. His body jerked as she ripped it open. Buttons pinged and popped and shot off into the dark. His eyes flared and hooded as she put her mouth to the hollow of his throat.

His chest was peppered in warped scars over the left side. Her mouth slid down them, sucking against the tortured flesh to favor it above the perfect surrounding skin. He made a small sound and trembled.

Yeah, she thought, torture. He'd been tortured. It was all over his body.

Her mouth sucked his nipple between her teeth and bit down, gently, until he writhed a little against her.

Jill lifted her mouth off him and tilted her head. His hands were fisted on the charm arms. Hers slid up his chest and raked with her nails, just hard enough to make his nipples peak. She rolled her hips on his lap, painfully slow. When he held so carefully still against her, she finally gripped his wrists and took his hands to slide them over her hips to her butt. She put them on her and used his hands to roll her body against him.

It was permission to touch her. He took it, working her hips in a smooth motion while she reached for his zipper.

He tensed, quivering a little, and finally gruffed, "...you sure? Jill?"

Freedom.

This was how she claimed hers again.

This was how she claimed _herself. _

She jerked on his zipper. She pulled him free into her fist. He moaned and let her, tugging her body forward enough that he could feel the wet of her sliding against her eager pumping fist.

Jill shifted over him. She felt his hands roam up her and down her back and finally settle on her ass as she guided him into her and sank down on his lap to claim him.

Into the electrical dark, he grunted, "..._fuck."_

And she did that too. She started rolling and raising her hips to swallow him into the heat of her. His hands guided her into a smooth wet ride. When the shirt got in the way, she whined softly and his hands moved to take it off her.

With a gasp panic, she grabbed for his wrists, "...wait..._wait.._don't."

Surprised, he surged into her hard enough to make her keen a little and grab for his face. Voice hoarse, he demanded, "Take it off, Jill. Let me see you."

She denied that, shaking her head no, "..please. No. I'm ugly."

His heart hurt. His hands slid around her hips and up her undulating belly. He cupped her heavy breasts in his palms and made her mouth open on a needy gasp. She gripped two handfuls of his hair and angled her body to start slapping down on his lap harder.

When she was so wet it was nearly killing him and her body was trying to suck him in and keep him there forever, his left hand shifted off her breast to lay flat over the scars on her chest. She panicked, trying to grab for his wrist to stop him, and his other hand looped around the back of her neck to drag her forward.

He kissed her instead, all tongue and sucking and plunging. Undone, she opened her mouth and let him. She stopped fighting him and let him stroke her scars as she rode him.

When her thighs quivered, his right hand cupped under her butt as he lifted her with that hand still on her scars and dumped her back on the bed. His pants fell uselessly to the floor. Her thighs spread desperately as the shirt bunched just under her breasts. His shirt flapped around him as he fucked her into the mattress while she gasped and bounced.

Her neck arched for his mouth. He kissed her and cruised his hand down to slip against the moist folds of her. His fingers skimmed, she keened and humped toward him, her body bucked and swallowed his - and he tugged her shirt up to feast on her breasts.

Jill grabbed for his ass to jerk him into her faster. Faster. Faster.

She announced, high and hoarse, "I'm gonna come, ok? I'm gonna come."

And she did. She tightened so hard around him it felt like she was dying. His hand jerked up her shirt to see her and he curled his tongue over the scars on her chest while she mewled and humped toward him.

Her hands slapped at his back. She fisted one handful of muscle and the other smacked his ass while he fucked her through her release and favored her scars with his mouth. She gasped and tried to stop him, weakly warning, "...don't...Leon...it's ugly."

Angry, he shook his head. He caught her hands that were trying to pull his mouth away and licked a wet line down her belly while he told her, "You're beautiful, Jill. _Beautiful. _You survived. Stop fighting me and let me show you."

Her hand slapped his ass as the orgasm made her seize up and arch and he answered it. He came in her with a grunt and a trembling curse. He sucked one of her nipples into his mouth and moaned his release around her sweaty skin.

As he thrust rapidly into her and pumped her full of his seed, she gasped and rolled him beneath her. She rode him through it, her hair falling around them. They clutched hands over his head and held until the gasping and the shivering and the shaking stopped.

And she collapsed on the bed beside him.

Into the trembling aftermath, she whispered, "...thank you."

She remained the only woman in the world to thank him for sex. His hand roved over her belly. It tucked possesively between her legs and made her tremble and gasp as he stroked his fingers against and inside her to feel where he'd claimed her.

And he answered, "...I fucking missed you, Jill. Tell me what you need."

Her hand slid against his where he fingered her. She moaned and humped her hips into his hand. Trembling, she pleaded, "...just don't stop, ok? Don't let go."

Didn't she realize? He didn't know how. He only knew how to hold on to her.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: I don't own Resident Evil. Sadly.**

* * *

**Love and other Drugs**

* * *

**Part Nine:**

**Amends**

* * *

_You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed...forever._

― Love and Other Drugs

* * *

**2009**

* * *

"The depth of her rage is a terrible thing. I've never seen someone so consumed with it before...Albert Wesker did a real number on her."

Standing in the quiet observatory, Chris Redfield watched the orderlies restrain Jill for the fifth time since they'd started trying to access her memories. With a calm face but a rapidly aching heart, he realized she might not be salvageable. She might be beyond recovery.

Each morning she awoke in a rage, screaming and fighting the shadows. Each night she went to sleep with her back in the corner of the small room and her knees to her chest. It was the only place she could see the whole room and not be exposed. A defense mechanism, a survival instinct, a traumatized survivors response to terror and attack.

She attacked when she felt cornered. She was swift, skilled, and deadly. She didn't need a weapon to be one herself. Whatever training she'd undergone, she was now the deadliest thing he'd ever seen on two legs. The scars on her chest were a tribute to the horror she'd been enslaved to commit.

Jill occasionally let him in to see her. It was rare, but she relented from time to time. When he did, she was careful to stand far away. She tried to tell him what she could to help him shut down anything related to what she'd seen or done. Wesker had tentacles that stretched across the globe. He had pockets of resistance fighters set to distribute his madness even in the event of his demise.

She knew enough to help them put a stop to three potential hot spots before they'd been exposed. If Uroboros was released, even with Wesker dead, the world wouldn't survive the fallout. Jill made sure they knew everything she could process. She submitted to hypnosis to help uncover the rest. But Wesker had put fail safes in place to stop her access.

The second she tread to close to memories he wanted buried, she became aggressive. Her mouth and her hands and her body reacted in a way that told of continuous, terrible, tortuous brainwashing.

She finally asked to be restrained while the hypnosis occurred, but the restraints panicked her. It took a sedative to calm her enough to get her to relent. As she floated, she wept, the subconscious trauma of a woman who'd done unspeakable things. She talked about children and blood. She talked about villages that she'd leveled. She spoke of watching the eyes of BSAA agents that she'd disposed of at his behest.

She was heavily traumatized. Neither she nor Chris was convinced that she would be able to come back from it.

At one point, she fled. She was gone for a whole night and most of the morning...and she returned in the care of Leon Kennedy. It didn't take a bloodhound to sniff out why he'd been so determined and dogged about her survival. He all but stank of love for her.

The moment she was back in the care of her handlers, she refused him entry to see her.

Surprised, Chris tried to find out why, but she refused to speak of it. She said only she was protecting him, like she was protecting them all, and if he pushed it - she'd block Chris from seeing her as well.

So he stopped pushing for Kennedy to be allowed to see her. He watched the other man hang outside the compound determined and unflagging for months. And then one day he was gone.

When Jill found out he'd stopped hanging around, she'd retreated to her room for three days. She emerged more determined than ever to get better. A curious thing, to know his leaving had someone prompted her to push harder than she ever had to recover.

Apparently, sometimes, love could be the thing that saved you after all.

* * *

**St. Louis, Missouri - 2011**

* * *

Downtown Saint Louis was known for a handful of things - The Arch, otherwise known as the Gateway to the West, where people would cross from one part of the country to the other. The enormous structure towered above a sprawling metropolis..with one of the highest crime rates in the U.S.A.

Anheuser-Busch - the biggest distributed of beer on American soil.

And sports. While the Cardinals dominated the majority of the major attention, the Blues remained the reason he came back again and again. The need to watch the ice swirl with sticks and sweat was almost addictive.

In the private box provided by the government, he watched them slap and score while the Ottawa Senators did the best they could to defend. It was rapidly becoming a fight of the ages. If Agent Smith and Neo popped out of the walls around them to do battle themselves, it wouldn't have been more entertaining.

He tried to focus on it, he did, but he was distracted by the last time he'd sat here and couldn't focus. Jill. Her name in his head rang like a bell.

He hadn't seen her since her return to recovery. A few days after she'd been readmitted, he'd tried. He'd gone to the hospital and been stone walled at the front gate. He could _see _her in the courtyard beyond the heavy grating.

But the cold eyed guards weren't budging.

He'd said, "You know I can take you both out and go anyway right?"

They'd looked less than impressed and one had returned, "Just orders, sir. Not personal. She's to have no visitors."

Annoyed, he'd spat, "Whose orders? Hers?"

And the other one had replied, "Captain Redfield, sir. She's in debriefment and recovery. She needs solitude."

With a snarl, Leon had told them, "She's had enough fucking solitude! Go and find him, now, or we find out how fucking tough you really are."

One left the other to guard the gate as Leon stepped aside to catch glimpses of her in that white hospital garb that looked like a gi without a belt. To get her attention, he'd called her name. She couldn't seem to hear him anyway.

And Redfield had come out of the gates.

They'd stood in the dying sun facing each other as Leon had demanded entrance. To this, Redfield had denied, "No. She doesn't need the drama, Leon. Not now. She needs peace, and the chance to recover herself. She needs therapy and patience and time. If she asks to see you, I'll let you know."

She'd never ask. They both knew that. Leon shook his head, surprised to find he was almost pleading, "I can help her. Let me in. Let me help her."

Redfield had looked cold and unyielding when he'd told him, "No. Don't come back. Don't push the issue. I'll have you forcibly thrown off the premises. When she's ready, she'll come find you."

He wasn't sure anymore why he said it. Maybe Redfield needed to know. Maybe it would change nothing, but he'd said it anyway, "...I love her."

And there'd been a flash of sympathy on Redfield's face. Just a flicker. There - gone. He'd took a deep breath and answered, with feeling, "I _know. _My guess is she knows too. Why do you think she's hiding?"

Leon had closed his eyes to gather himself. With more sympathy, Redfield had told him, "Go home, Leon. Go home. It's all you can do here. We both know what you did to help find her. She's safe. She's here. Let her heal in her own way...and go home."

Each had stood in the bloody light of the end of the day with their jaws set, but it was Leon that relented. If she needed this, if he was right, it would only hurt her to make a scene. So she'd backed off.

He'd gone home.

He kept on trying. They kept on stopping him. Eventually he stopped trying.

She'd never called.

Two years. He'd waited that first year out by taking missions that might have scared a lesser agent. He'd killed and maimed and broken apart the pockets of loyalists still clinging to a future filled with fear and he hadn't thought of her more than a handful of minutes in every day.

With the beer halfway to his mouth, Leon shook his head. Liar. He was a liar. He'd thought of her every day. At the end of it, when he was alone and settled in his sheets to sleep, he'd thought of her.

At first, he'd made an attempt to bury her under other women. A waitress, a nurse, a receptionist, a fellow agent, a former beauty queen - he'd had his fair share of female faces popping in and out of his bed. Some more beautiful than Jill, some more simple, some more deserving of his affection. No lie there. He could marry one and have a family.

He'd come across Ada once a few nights before. He'd shared a drink, some intelligence, and two orgasms with her in the Hilton by the ballpark. He'd woken up to find she'd stolen his PDA and left a little note with a kiss.

She was certainly bad for him. She was definitely more complicated than Jill. In a way, she was even more intriguing.

Why was he still hung up on her? He could ditch Jill at any point and move on with his life.

As the _shink _and _swish _of ice filled the cold air, he called himself a liar for the second time that night. He knew why he was hung up on Jill. He'd spent a lifetime now denying that she was anything but the best sex he'd ever had.

It wasn't because she was a goddess. It wasn't because she was the most beautiful or the best fit or the most flattering. It wasn't that simple. It never had been. When he was with her, he wasn't a hero with a lifetime of battles behind him. He wasn't a teacher in a lecture hall guiding the next wave of warriors to the fight. He wasn't a legend. He wasn't even a soldier.

He was just a man. He remembered what it was like to be just Leon. Just a kid with a ponytail in a city looking to make the world a little safer. Jill reminded him that under it all, at the bottom, he was still human.

He'd probably been in love with her that first time he'd touched her. Casual, tawdry, and filthy as it was...he was still a good guy under the shell of a man out for nothing more than a good time. He still wanted someone to miss him when he was gone and mourn him if he died and look at him with something other than pleasure at being fucked good and hard.

Touching Jill electrified him. It was like a defibrillator against his chest sending electrical currents into his cold, dead heart. He wanted to feel it all the time. In the absence of it, like a junkie, he sat around craving it.

And he tried to trade one high for another.

After the game, he found himself wandering down on the Landing beside the mighty Mississippi. The semi-darkness cast shadows over the glistening and well lit arch. He could hear music from the bars on the walk and laughter. He could smell the familiar scent of meat on an open flame. He lit up a cigarette and the orange light flickered over his tired face.

The heavy brown wool peacoat he wore kept the chill at bay. The navy colored scarf circling his neck in the open collar tossed color into the dull. He'd forgone the hat, but it didn't match the outfit anyway so he was better off without it.

The curl of smoke slid around his ear as he turned down the alley beside a bar to head toward the pier beside the arch. There was a soft skitter of rocks and the bump of a gun into his lower back. Into the tense air, Leon let out a snort, "You're robbing the wrong person, asshole. I don't have anything worth stealing."

Beside the shell of his left ear, a voice returned, "I think we'll agree to disagree on that."

The gun relented and moved away and he turned. Jill stood there with a cell phone in her hand and no weapon in sight. She was in a soft blue coat the color of a robins egg. Her long, long, long hair was around her shoulders and topped by a pretty white sock hat that slouched cutely to one side. The soft ring of fur on her hood hugged around her face.

He blew out a smoke ring and shook his head with a snide sound of laughter, "I think I'd prefer being robbed."

Her lips turned up into a smile. "Don't be petty."

Leon sighed and turned back to start walking. Jill fell into step beside him. She pursed her lips around a small smile, "Mad at me, are you?"

He rolled his eyes, "Sure. Take a minute and flatter yourself."

She chuckled as they stepped out onto the pier and the first swell of cold river air brushed over them. Jill shivered and Leon _almost _put an arm around her shoulders out of habit. Annoyed at the impulse, he flicked aside the cigarette and put his hands into his pockets on his coat instead.

They stood looking out at the barges and the twinkling lights of the city.

When the silence dragged on, Jill finally spoke, "I heard you've been spending time with Annabelle Wallace in Field Ops."

Leon scoffed and took a deep breath, "What do you want here, Jill? You haven't said a word to me in almost eighteen months. You wanna pick up where we left off?"

Without missing a beat, she replied, "Yes."

The sheer surprise alone had him turning his head from the river view to her face. She was watching him so calmly. The blonde hair suited her in a way you didn't expect. He'd heard that the cryostasis had sapped her melanin in a way that left her pale and flawless. She'd never tan, she'd never wrinkle, she'd never go gray. It had retarded the aging process to the point she might always look close to what she did now.

When he was old and gray, would she still be young and beautiful?

He was 3 years her junior, but she looked timeless. He scanned her face with a shake of his, "...no."

He started to move past her and she reached out a hand. He hated the fact that they both felt it the moment her fingers curled into his coat to stop him. She brought him up short with her next words, "I couldn't-I couldn't, Leon. Not then. I couldn't."

Frustrated, he studied her face with his brow furrowed. And he was betting his brow was wrinkled. Hers? Smooth. "What the hell does that even mean, Jill? What am I supposed to do with that?"

She turned him toward her and he let her. Her hands petted down the front of the soft wool. She shook her head and closed her eyes with her face bowed before she spoke, "I knew you'd let me use you up. I knew you'd let me hurt you if I needed it. I knew if I didn't cut you loose, I'd drag you down with me. I couldn't be what you needed. I couldn't even be what _I _needed. I was too fucked up for that."

With a trickle of sympathy, he lifted his hand out of his pocket and cupped her chin. Lifting it so they could look at each other, he finally said, "I'm not something you use and toss aside, Jill. I can handle myself. Whatever ugly dark is all over you, I can handle that too. You didn't cut me off to spare me, you cut me off because the thought of me seeing you - naked, exposed, and broken- it scared you to death."

Her face flickered with pain. She shrugged a single shoulder, "So what? Is that so bad? I'd spent so long without control of myself, my world, my actions. I needed to just...reboot. I needed to decompress and rebuild. I couldn't do that worried I was losing parts of myself to you too. I had nothing left to give. Nothing. And you deserved more than nothing."

His other hand shifted. It was swift. It gripped into the back of her hair and made her gasp. He angled her face up to him with all that hair tangled around his fingers. Softly, he gritted between his teeth, "I think I fucking know what I can handle, Jill. I don't need you to protect me. Ever."

Quietly, she whispered, "I didn't say what you could handle, Leon. I said what you _deserved."_

He didn't let go of her hair, but he told her, "...it's too late-I've moved on."

And she returned, "...than why can't you just let go?"

Damn her.

He didn't have the answer.

She went to her tiptoes to kiss him; eyes opening and holding. He didn't help her, but he didn't stop her either. She traced her tongue along the seam of his lips and he opened his mouth to her.

He just wasn't enough of a saint to stay still while she kissed him. The second time her tongue slid into his mouth, he sucked it. The hand in her hair tightened and his other one went under her coat to cup her ass. He dragged her close and she grappled at the buttons of his peacoat to get inside and touch him.

The warm touch of the thermal he wore didn't stop her from feeling the heavy tattoo of his heart. He pressed her back against the wooden post beside the pier and her mouth broke from his with a gasp.

Before he could kiss her again, she commanded, "...look at me."

His hand slid down her belly under her coat. It skimmed over her jeans and he palmed the heavy denim to rub at her beneath it. She made a small sound and urged, again, "Leon, look at me."

And so he did. He opened his eyes to look at her face as he rubbed at her obscenely. Jill caught his hand to still him. She shivered and whispered, hoarsely, "...you have to forgive me, Leon."

Surprised, he stopped rubbing at her. She looked so desperate. She looked so sad. His eyes swept her features. He dipped his mouth to kiss her and watch the pleasure on her shivering lids. Quietly, after a moment, he told her, "...I forgive you."

Did he? He wasn't even angry at her. Not really. He'd been concerned about her, sure, but never angry. He knew she'd been cutting him off. He knew why. He just wished she'd talk to him about what had happened to her so he could help her deal with it.

His hands shifted off her body. They tucked under her coat. Hers echoed him until they were standing in the cold, hugging. Her nose pressed into his neck. She closed her eyes.

Jill whispered, "You sleeping with Annabelle Wallace?"

Leon turned his nose into her hair. He took a deep breath. The scent of her made his balls tight. Forgive her? He was starting to think he was a little obsessed with her. He couldn't even picture Annabelle's face or anyone elses. Hell, he hadn't even picture them when he'd been fucking them. So he returned, "...not anymore."

And they both stood in the cold just holding on.

After a long moment, his coat started vibrating. Ignoring it, he tucked a kiss behind her ear. Jill shifted her head. She nuzzled across his face until they could kiss each other. Soft somehow, almost gentle. Her fingers flicked at buttons to open it and she tucked herself inside his coat against his body.

He closed it around both of them and kept on kissing her. Stupid, maybe, because she was still wounded. But he didn't care about that. Something about him made her feel safe and secure and almost desperate.

She didn't look at him like he was something there to fuck her and forget her. She looked at him like he was something there to heal her.

Her arms slid around his waist and she tucked her hands up under his thermal shirt as she kissed across his neck. He cupped her face and tilted his head back to let her lips move over his jaw. Against his skin, she murmured, "You wanna come back to my place and rape me?"

He started to laugh and agree. As if the answer was ever no? And his jacket buzzed again.

Jill leaned back to look at him, "...you wanna answer that?"

In answer, he plucked the phone from his pocket and tossed it in a spinning arc into the mighty Mississippi.

With a twitch of a smile, Jill mused, "What if that was a mission to save the world?"

He tugged her close again to hold her and answered, "The world can wait. I wanna take you somewhere I've never taken anyone else."

With her mouth against the soft space behind his ear, she murmured, "Where? In the butt?"

His soft laughter healed something in both of them. With his cheek on her hair, he replied, "Would you say yes to that?"

Jill chuckled against his skin, but she didn't say no. Amused, he shook his head and finally said, "But no...home. Will you come home with me, Jill Valentine?"

There was no way in the world she'd ever say no.


	10. Chapter 10

**Part ten:**

**Recovery**

* * *

**Montauk, Long Island, New York -2012**

* * *

The lighthouse sat like a sentry above the tiny little town. The red and white was a beacon in a dreary gray sky.

As they exited the ferry, the picture perfect seaside village gave Jill a moment of real appreciation. She felt like she was looking at a painting from her dirty bed in that apartment she'd shared with brother while their father had worked odd jobs and drank himself into oblivion.

It was the type of place she'd always thought she'd live one day with a little girl and a dog...and a man like Leon Kennedy.

He held her hand as they walked. He spoke softly, talking about his family. He greeted people as they moved like a native. They knew him here. He was a local. He was a family. He was in the bosom of something real.

Their fingers blended as he surprised the hell out of her one last time - and guided her to the bicycles chained to a post beside the post office.

Her brows shot up. His grin was white and happy. "That's how we get around here. Some of the roads are impassable by car."

With a shake of her head, Jill chuckled, "Why not? When it Rome..."

She threw her leg over the pretty blue bicycle and followed his adorable ass out onto the dirt road beside the water. He was as at home here, in the middle of a beautiful island, as he'd been in a big city. He was riding that bike in that pretty peacoat like his legs and butt were made for it.

He was the greatest mystery she'd ever known.

The ride was scenic and quick. The part of the island just wasn't that damn big. The house he rode up to was white, the paint peeling in a way that spoke of centuries of beauty and sea air, and graced with a front porch made for seagull watching. She heard one cry as they set their bikes against the wood and he guided her to the door.

What waited beyond that red door? A wife? A couple of kids?

He called out in some language she didn't understand as he opened the door. It took her a moment to realize it was probably Portuguese, because the woman who came around the corner clearly was. She was coppery skinned, plump, and pretty in a way that said immigrant.

Her laughter was musical as she chattered at him. He picked her up in a hug until her feet dangled.

As he set her down, she scooped back his hair from his face and was clearly teasing him about it...and then her eyes fell on Jill.

The pleasure was swift and fast. She started speaking in rapid rolling words. She rushed forward to kiss Jill on both cheeks. She hugged her. She turned to kiss Leon again on the mouth.

And he said, almost sheepishly, "Jill...this is my mother, Fatima."

He said it with an accent, as if he'd never said any other way. Fatima was teary eyed as she finally spoke English, "You bring me, finally, a daughter in law. You are a bad boy to keep me waiting all these years. Where are my _bebês?"_

Jill started to speak and Leon guided his mother away with a wink at Jill. After a moment, Fatima looked disappointed, but understanding. She grinned and patted his cheeks as she declared, "I am making _Feijoada! _You will stay for dinner!"

She spun away and disappeared into the kitchen which wafted with wonderful smells and sounds. It was warm in the house and done in varying shades of yellow and pale blue. Jill started to ask exactly what _feijoada! _was, and the door beside the small red sofa in front of her opened.

It wasn't a child that walked out, but it wasn't an adult either. The grinning face was blonde and full above a pink dress. The small woman paused, blinked, and grinned. And it was obvious she had downs syndrome. She had a round face with a flat profile and small nose and mouth. Her almond-shaped eyes were the same seafoam as Leon with skin that covered the inner eye.

When she spoke, it was lisping, "...oh...my...gawd..."

Leon narrowed his eyes at her and remarked, "...I never expected to see the likes of you round these parts."

The woman pursed her lips, grinned, and tried to look serious, "...I should poke those eyes out so you'll never see again."

He laughed. She laughed. He opened his arms and she waddled into them to hold him. With a kind of softness she'd never seen on anyone, ever, he looked over her shoulder and announced, "Jill...this is the light of my life...my sister, Ana."

Surprised, Ana leaned back to blink at him, "Jill? She's real?"

He'd spoken of her to his sister. He'd told his family about her. Her heart shivered as Jill replied, "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Ana turned toward her. She narrowed her eyes. Jill felt like she was being x-rayed before the other woman finally announced, "She is prettier than you said, Leon."

And everyone laughed.

Jill remarked, tongue in cheek, "I think I should be insulted."

Jill watched him with Ana as the evening wore on. Through a dinner made of something wonderfully filled with vegetables and spices and pork, to a game of Scrabble that he lost - and she wasn't entirely sure he didn't do it on purpose - to a trip out the back door to sit by the water on a blanket and watch the stars...she'd never have imagined this was what he'd come from.

Ana was never far from his side. They spoke softly in whispers and had his mother piping in to wonder what mischief they were up to. They were in their own world and brought her along for a ride.

Ana pointed out constellations. She talked about Hercules and how he saved so many when he rose from nothing. She talked about her brother in the same tone. When Jill watched Leon carrying something heavy in from the yard to the house for his mother, Ana remarked, "He always pretends he's not."

Curious, Jill wondered, "Not what?"

"...a hero. But he was a hero the day he was born."

Jill glanced down at her adoring face to find they were both watching him. She slipped an arm around Ana's shoulders as the woman added, "He's always been my hero. He was the baby...but he was always protecting me. He thinks I don't know."

Jill felt her heart shiver as she whispered, "Don't know what?"

"...what it cost him." Ana smiled up at Jill, "I'm slow, not stupid. He was afraid to leave me for so long. I'm glad he found you, Jill. I think you're the reason he didn't come running back. I think he knew he needed you with him first."

With a small sliver of something painfully like hope, she wondered, "Why?"

Looking confused, Ana tilted her head, "Why else? You're his girl."

Jill laughed and smiled at her, "I think _you're _his girl."

Without missing a breath, Ana replied, "I think we both are, Jill."

Jill was quiet the rest of the evening while she digested that. What good could come from this? What good would it do either of them? The life they led, the things they'd done and seen, the world they lived in...there was no place for love or romance or commitment.

What good would it do to crave it from each other?

She was still trying to figure out who she was now. She didn't have a place in her life for him. Yet she couldn't stay away. She didn't want to. She wanted to be wherever he was, for as long as they could stand it.

She wanted to be his girl. Whatever that meant.

When his mother and Ana went to bed, she found herself nervous around him in a way she'd never been. When he went outside to clean up their blanket on the sand, she caught his hands as he lifted it to shake it.

In the moonlight, his hair looked white. So did hers.

Softly, she told him, "I was wrong before."

He paused, considering that, "...about what?"

Jill shook her head, "I was wrong. When you told me you loved me...I said I had to think about it. I was afraid. I was stupid. I was _wrong. _I don't want to think about it. I just want to feel it. I was numb for so fucking long. I just want to feel it. I'm sorry I panicked. I'm even more sorry I kept you away when you just wanted to help me. I don't know how to accept help...worse than that...I don't want to see what I was when I look at you."

Surprised, his brows winged up, "...what you were? When you were with me?"

She nodded. Her hands curled over his wrists to hold them. "I was determined once and good and true. It's trite and cliche and stupid...but I was. I was a woman with a purpose to change the world...what am I now? A weapon that was broken when it was no longer of use anymore. I'd do anything to keep you remembering me the way I was."

Softly, he wondered, "The way you were?"

"Young. Beautiful. Strong."

His head tilted as he asked, "...and what are you now?"

Without missing a beat, she told him, "Empty."

He shook his head. His wrists rolled in her hands to grip her underarms and tug her forward. She let him, shifting her body in against his until they were nose to nose as he told her, "Not empty, Jill, wounded. I can't fix you, I'm not a miracle worker, but sometimes being with someone makes it just a little easier to live with the pain."

Almost desperately, she whispered, "...you could have someone unspoiled, someone good..someone soft and hopeful. If I was a better person, I'd have stayed away to let you find that."

Leon shook his head no and returned, "I don't want someone hopeful, Jill, I just want _you. _I'll take you scary and damaged. I'll take you broken and hurting. I'll take you scared and struggling. I'll take you any way I can get you. How far you let me in...that's up to you. But I'm not going anywhere."

To make a liar out of him, his mother poked her head out the door and informed them, "Leon...you have a call. He says he is your boss."

Leon let go of Jill as his mother disappeared back into the house. He started to move around her to answer the call and she caught the front of his jacket and turned him back to her. His hands lifted and caught her face to turn it up.

It was a good kiss. It was possibly the first of its kind in a way. It was the first time she dropped her guard enough to be vulnerable with him. Urgently, she told him, "Don't go. Ok? Don't go."

His hand slid down her arm to catch hers. He twined their fingers as he picked up the phone from the railing where his mother had left it. He remarked, "I'm on furlough. I'm not leaving."

His face said otherwise. Whatever the call was, it wasn't something he could skirt. He argued, he tried, but the anger on him was legion when he hung up. Without a word, he turned toward her.

Jill shook her head, feeling a shiver. Maybe it was a sign. It was a sign to slow down. She was trying to make up for lost time. She was trying to fuse herself to him when she knew it was a mistake.

She let go of his hand, "It's ok. You don't have to say it. You have to go. It's alright."

When she tried to back off, Leon trapped her against the railing. He caught her face again and told her, "I will come back here. Stay here. Right here...and wait for me. Stay."

Her eyes twinkled as Jill mused, "Right here? On the porch? What if I have to pee?"

When he didn't smile back, Jill remarked, "Leon, I _can't. _Here? With your family? How long will you be gone?"

He shrugged, "I don't know. A few days. A week. Hard to say."

Jill laughed, dryly, "I can't stay here in your family's house for a week, Leon. That's weird."

He let go of her and shook his head, "Not weird, but I get it. I do. So you don't have to stay right here, not exactly. I have a house down the water about half a mile. I think-I think Ana would benefit from knowing you, Jill. I'd like for her to get the chance."

Jesus.

What kind of bitch would say no to that?

After a handful of moments, she finally nodded. "...ok. I'll stay." He had no idea what that cost her. It was the first real time she'd ever done something like that for someone else.

The bad news about his job was that there was no time to make love or something to say goodbye. The helicopter showed up about fifteen minutes after the phone call. Apparently, Uncle Sam could move like lightning when he wanted.

Just like that - he was gone.

* * *

She stayed the first night with his family at their request. Ana was a wonderful companion. She never, even for a second, let Jill feel like a hindrance. Fatima plied her with food until she could hardly stand it.

In the morning, Ana rodes bikes with her down the shore to Leon's house.

Whatever she'd expected, it wasn't what she found. She'd thought...what? That he'd have a mansion over looking the trembling toss of the sea? Maybe she'd underestimated his distaste for mansion. Hell, did any of them like them anymore?

It was a cape cod style bungalow with a copper roof. The porch was so wonderfully hand carved. She paused, considered, and Ana filled in the question she hadn't even asked, "He built it...with my father...right after he graduated from high school."

Jesus.

He was a hero, a bad ass, a carpenter and a humble family man. There was no facet the same in Leon Kennedy. You could stare at his face until you went blind, curl up on his porch until you took root, and never really know him.

A perpetual mystery for all time.

At what point would she acknowledge that was in love with him? It wasn't hard. It wasn't. It was just saying it, out loud, and accepting it. Chris was the only man in the world she'd ever said I love you too. And that wasn't the same at all.

Chris was her best friend in the whole world.

And she'd never, not once, looked at him and felt like she could spend the rest of her life naked on top of him.

God knew what her life might have been if she had.

They crossed up the porch and stepped into the house and here, again, she saw pieces of Leon that Chris would have never left behind. Chris didn't personalize. He left things Spartan and easy and simple. In a way, Jill was exactly the same. It's why they made good partners and friends - less mess, less attachment, less trouble.

There were things that said personal all over the tiny house. The guest bedroom was done in shades of seawater and sunshine. It was soft and feminine somehow and likely decorated by his sister. The other, the master, was all him.

There was a Star Wars alarm clock on a hand painted dresser in pale white. She touched it and Darth Vader grumbled at her to wake up. An apron was slung over the chair of a small desk that said _May the Forks Be With You - _a pun. Of course it was a pun. He had a legendary sense of humor.

The bed spread was nautical blue and white with a ships steering wheel in pretty brown slapped on the center. The pillows fluffy and encased in bright white cases. The walls were exposed wood and met on the ceiling in pretty naked beam work.

A series of things greeted her eye on the dresser. An old pocket watch with the face open to show the tick of a little second hand. There was an inscription in Portuguese on the open lid. A pocket full of change was gathered next to a faded photograph. She picked it up to find all the smiling faces of his family at what was likely a reunion.

Smiling gently, she set it down. The drawer beside her was slightly ajar so she wiggled it open. Socks, underwear, an adorable little case with gold reading glasses, the faded old t-shirt he'd been wearing the day she met him and the edge of something tucked beneath the socks.

Figuring it was a booby magazine and smiling about it, Jill tugged it free.

It wasn't. It wasn't even close.

It was a picture of her on the balcony of the clock tower in Raccoon City. She was in mid life, in profile, and dazzled by the bright sun. She looked impossibly happy. She looked young and bright and hopeful.

The picture was faded in a way that said he'd had it a loooong time. He was a man who didn't throw away shirts...or old photographs of girls who were dead and gone.

She was still holding it when Ana joined her. "Oh, you found it."

Jill looked up at her as she walked over. The big smile on her face was contagious as Jill asked, "...you know about it?"

"Oh, yes. I found it one day when I did his laundry. He didn't try to pretend. He just...told me about you."

Jill sat down on the edge of the bed and shook her head, "...what did he say?"

Ana, grinning, joined her. "That he'd never met anyone in the world like you. You were open and honest and real." Ana patted her knee, "Leon...he appreciates real I think. It's good for him."

Real.

Was she?

She didn't even really know who she was anymore.

The girl in the photo had taken an eager faced rookie home and fucked him without boundaries or fears or regrets. The one sitting on his bed was nothing but all of those things. Wesker hadn't just stolen her life, he'd stolen her hope. There was more than one way to die.

She was rotting from the inside the same as any zombie.

Something about being in Leon's house, with his sister, near his things and looking at photo of the girl she used to be made it just a little easier to breathe.

Somehow, he'd known she needed them almost as much as he needed her.

Jill tucked the photo back in the drawer and rose with determination. She offered a hand to Ana to help her stand and informed her, "Then what do you say we start making something real for him to come home to?"

And Ana smiled as bright as the sun beyond the beautiful windows.

* * *

Her phone rang in the middle of the night about a week later. She rolled over on the bed in the spare room to answer it.

Without preamble, Chris told her, "...we got news from the ESR, Jill. They've pulled all the support in the region."

It wasn't unexpected. The unstable civil war in the Eastern Slav Republic was a constant headache for Russian and American forces that were attempted to prevent a coup for power there. With the infusion of bio-weapons, the small nation was now over run. The best thing for everyone was to pull out and let them finish each other off before the area was sanitized.

Groggily, she replied, "Ok. Good. You're safe?"

Chris returned, "I'm fine. I'm not there. I'm in Edonia attempting to quell an uprising."

"Good."

"No...Jill, listen...it's not good."

She blinked, hazily, at the clock: 3 a.m. Nothing good ever happened after 3 a.m. "What is it, Chris? Quit with the foreplay and tell me."

He didn't say anything she'd been expecting. He fractured her world, "Kennedy was there on orders. He was in the hot zone. They tried to pull him and he refused. He went A.W.O.L. to finish the mission. Nobody has heard anything out of him for eighteen hours. The last satellite trail we had on him...it lost him in an underground parking lot...facing off against at least thirty lickers."

Jill said nothing. She was afraid she couldn't breathe.

So Chris went on, "Heat signatures saw him go down, Jill. After that...we can't tell what happened. They converged on him...they dispersed...and his signature was gone."

He was being so careful. He wasn't saying it out right. He needed to say it. She needed to hear it. So she said it herself, "...he's dead."

Chris, softly, answered, "...yeah. Reports are? He was K.I.A."

Killed in action - a stupid way of saying it. A stupid, clinical, horrible way to talk about a man like that being ripped apart. His body torn limb from limb. His face split open and sucked dry by monsters.

There'd be nothing left of him. Decimated.

Like her heart.

Jill finally whispered, "Thank you for telling me. Stay safe, Chris."

"Kennedy was a good man, Jill, I'm so-"

She hung up. She couldn't hear it. She didn't want to hear it. She couldn't. Could not. Didn't want to. If she heard it, it might be real. She wasn't ready for it to be real. She couldn't imagine telling his family. She rolled over on the bed and stared at the moonlight out the window.

When that wasn't enough, she rose and went into his room. She pulled the faded gray t-shirt from the drawer and put it on her naked body. She climbed into his bed. She took his pillow to hold it against her.

She was still staring out the window when the sun came up.

The first morning of a world without Leon Kennedy.


End file.
